


remnants

by bluelines



Category: Hockey RPF, Women's Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Crossover: Infamous, F/F, Gen, Superheroes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-22
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2018-12-18 18:57:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 26,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11880738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluelines/pseuds/bluelines
Summary: Kacey's never met a Conduit, but it doesn't take much to convince her they're not as dangerous as everyone says.





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the same universe as the Infamous video games, but it's totally not necessary to have played them or to know what the story is about to enjoy the fic. 
> 
> Essentially: a Conduit is someone with a gene (called the Conduit gene) that affords them special powers, which aren't present at birth but can develop or be activated later on. The D.U.P. is the Department of Unified Protection, a government agency that exists to track down and 'neutralize' Conduits, which have been labeled by the D.U.P. as 'bio-terrorists'. Society allowed this to happen out of fear of Conduits that flourished after a major incident involving a power-hungry Conduit (the Beast) who caused major loss of life and destruction of property.
> 
> Rating will go up next chapter but for right now it's mostly gen/friendship anyway.

Meghan wakes up shaking.

It’s thundering. Whether that or the acrid smell of her blanket smoldering is what wakes her up, she can’t be sure. Either way, Paula hasn’t woken up, so she sits up and pats her comforter down until it stops and disappears into the hallway.

This always happens when it storms. It has since she was little. Electrical storms--early summer storms like these, where the lightning jumps from cloud to cloud and won’t even do her the favor of subduing itself into the ground or a lightning rod or a building--are the worst. On a good night she can’t sleep. On a bad night like tonight where she’s been sleeping five hours for the past week studying for organic chemistry and comparative vertebrate anatomy, she can’t even _breathe_.

She stumbles blindly down the hallway, realizing only once she’s outside on the pavement that she’s barefoot. It’s not raining; if it were the lightning would be touching down and she’d still be asleep, or at least hyperventilating in her own bed. She tucks her hands into her armpits, crossing her arms over her chest and trying to quell the sparks jumping from her fingertips. Every hair on her body is on end and every building she can see has people in it, people she could hurt, or people who could see her for what she is. She’s seconds away from exposing herself, maybe hours away from the back of a D.U.P. van if she’s not careful. And they don’t know what happens next. Nobody does. There are rumors, horror stories. Supposedly they have a way of making the powers go away. 

The field. She’ll go to the field. It’s far enough from a dorm that she can’t hurt anyone there, in theory, if she loses control the way it feels like she’s going to, and far enough away that it might just look like lightning if she does.

-

Kacey can still hear the Theta’s bass humming in her ears. In some ways it’s actually louder than the thunder. She doesn’t have a raincoat so she’s booking it back across campus, almost jogging, taking the shortcut through the soccer fields in hopes that the rain she can feel on its way will wait for her to get inside. 

For a second she has to stop center field to watch the lightning. It’s called blanket lightning, she remembers, when it just goes cloud to cloud, and it’s beautiful, even if it looks like the world is ending. 

When she lowers her eyes again she sees the bleachers dancing with electricity and almost starts to run away.

They light up and then go dark again, and when the bolts in the clouds comes back there’s just enough light to see a girl sitting in the center of the bleachers, a dark figure with her hood up, and that’s how Kacey finds herself running _towards_ the bleachers.

“Are you crazy?” she yells, and when the figure looks up she cups her hands around her mouth and shouts up over the wind.

“You’re going to get struck!”

The bleachers light up again and she stumbles back. She can _feel_ the crackle, can feel the way the tiny hairs on her arms stand up, can taste the metal in her mouth. The girl on the bleachers convulses and Kacey thinks she’s hurt or dying until she recognizes it for what it is: the shudders of deep, hysterical crying.

“Are you hurt?” she calls up, and the girl shakes her head. She hadn’t reacted at all to the lightning. And Kacey never saw the lightning leave the sky.

“I’m coming up,” she says, and the girl finally looks up, enough so that Kacey can kind of almost see her face.

“No,” the other girl calls down to her, “go, it’s me.”

Kacey recognizes her voice. She ignores the warning and the fact that her heart is in her throat and scrambles up onto the bleachers. The first touch is like static electricity, traveling up her arms and making every inch of her skin tingle, but she ignores it. She has to know if she’s right. She’s seen things before on TV and the Internet, Conduits captured after they lost their minds and opened fire in an empty parking lot or something similar. They all had different powers. She’s never seen this before, and this is someone she knows. This isn’t some crazy fugitive. Just a girl.

She’s not like the Beast. Kacey’s seen the tapes, she knows what the government tells everyone, that bio-terrorists are unpredictable and dangerous and, given the opportunity the Beast had, will wipe out swaths of human lives like it’s nothing. Only, that’s never happened as long as Kacey can remember being alive. And this girl doesn’t look dangerous or power-hungry, she just looks scared.

“Meghan,” Kacey says, when she can see the girl’s face. She remembers her name from general Psych, two years ago. Meghan is a soccer player. She was an all-American, too; Kacey remembers her from the banquet.

“You need to go,” Meghan says, but she’s out of breath and still hyperventilating, hunched over, refusing to look up. Kacey knows what a panic attack is supposed to look like.

“You’re okay,” she says, and Meghan finally looks up at her.

Her eyes are blue. Possibly they’ve always been blue, Kacey doesn’t remember, but they’re not blue like normal blue--they’re electric, and Kacey, despite herself, takes a step back.

“I could kill you,” Meghan says, but it sounds like a realization, not a threat. “If I freak out--”

“You’re not going to,” Kacey says, and she’s not sure why she believes it so much. She takes the step forward again. It starts to rain.

Meghan looks up into the sky for a few seconds when the rain finally comes, long enough for Kacey to sit down next to her. She holds out her hands and they spark, but Kacey won’t move away even if part of her is screaming to run. The rain makes the electricity in Meghan’s fingers fizzle. She starts to breathe normally after what feels like a few minutes, and Kacey doesn’t speak until Meghan looks at her again.

“See,” she says, “I told you that you wouldn’t freak out.”

“I could have,” Meghan says, but she’s almost smiling, the rain starting to drip off her sweatshirt hood and into her eyes. Kacey’s cold all of a sudden when she realizes that her t-shirt is soaked through.

“You okay?” she asks, and Meghan nods, looking away again. 

“Are you going to call the D.U.P.?” Meghan asks finally, and Kacey is shocked--shocked that Meghan would think she would, and shocked that it didn’t even occur to her. That’s what she should do. That’s what they’re taught to do from the second that someone explains to them what a Conduit is, but it seems drastic to her, to ruin someone’s life like that.

“No,” Kacey says honestly, “of course not. You’re not dangerous.”

For a few seconds it’s clear that Meghan doesn’t believe her. Kacey doesn’t reach for her phone, but she’s trying to remember if there’s some kind of punishment for encountering a Conduit and not reporting. There must be, but nobody will have any proof she was here. And besides, she could always say she was blackout drunk. People saw her at the party.

“I’m trying,” Meghan says carefully, “I never got full control. I guess technically I’m still growing, so that might be why, but I’d never...I don’t want to hurt anyone. I don’t want to be something people need protection from” 

She tugs her sweatshirt sleeves over her hands and stands, gesturing to Kacey.

“We should go inside,” she says, and Kacey follows her down off the bleachers, half-slipping when she remembers that she’s still a little drunk. 

-

“Why did you trust me not to hurt you?” Meghan blurts, once they’re standing inside the lobby of the gym. It was the closest place to wait out the torrential downpour. Kacey’s swaddled in one of the two towels she scrounged up from the girl’s locker room, Meghan in the other, even though she doesn’t feel the cold or the wet yet. She will soon, when it wears off. There’s still lightning around, just not in her anymore. For the moment.

Kacey shrugs, toweling out her dusky hair, but she turns a little pink.

“You didn’t want to hurt me,” she says. “And I figured that had to count for something.”

“But I’m,” Meghan hesitates, not wanting to say it but knowing that she has to, “a Conduit.”

“You’re a person,” Kacey says simply, and she sounds like she believes it. Meghan wonders if it could really be that easy, if thinking hard enough about how much she wants _not_ to hurt someone could help her control the energy sparking through her, but the thought of trying to control anything exhausts her. Some days it’s easy to believe that the government is right to think the human race needs protection from people like her.

“That was really stupid,” she says, dragging herself back into the present, and Kacey looks up at her, wrinkling her nose.

“Yeah, well,” she says, “I’m drunk. Was drunk.”

“Still stupid,” Meghan shoots back, and Kacey’s confusion turns into a slow, toothy grin. “Didn’t your parents ever tell you to stay away from Conduits?”

She can’t believe she’s joking about it, but there’s something about Kacey, something about the fact that Kacey trusted her right away. It feels like they’ve been friends for a hundred years.

“Nah,” Kacey says, curling into her towel again, pulling it over her head, “just the usual stuff. Don’t take candy from strangers. Don’t get in sketchy white vans. But you haven’t offered me any Tootsie Rolls, so I’m not worried.”

“I’m not a stranger,” Meghan points out, and Kacey makes an agreeable noise. “Also,” she adds as an afterthought, watching as the rain starts to let up outside, “Tootsie Rolls are disgusting.”


	2. 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> gillian finds what she's been chasing, but not the way she hoped.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating goes up to M this chapter ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Gillian is almost dozing off when the scanner crackles and a voice stands out as more enthusiastic than before, than the others: “It’s one of them.”

Then she’s scrambling, reaching for her camera and shoving her Moleskine in her back pocket, waiting only for the street names before she rushes out of her apartment and half jogs down the stairs. It’s not far, a ten minute walk but closer if she bikes. She’s been awake for twenty straight hours and her hands shake when she locks her bike back up, but she’s never more awake or more alive than she is when she’s following the sound of action, slipping between buildings.

“I’ll shoot,” Gillian hears, and she follows the sound of a man’s voice until she’s peering around a corner. Her camera won’t work here without a flash and she knows better than to try that, so she fishes her phone out of her pocket when she looks again. There’s a figure there with its back to her, probably five nine, with a sweatshirt hood up so she can’t see to identify age or race or anything else. The cornered criminal, though, she _can_ see. He has the stooped, sickly look of a meth abuser. He also has a backpack of what must be stolen goods under one arm and his other hand holding a pistol in the general direction of the vigilante like he doesn’t know a Conduit when he sees one.

She starts the video then, with the criminal’s hand shaking, seconds before the Conduit’s fingertips start to spark. She hears the safety of the gun click off and distantly realizes she might want to be concerned about her own welfare, but before he can fire the hooded figure lifts a hand and lightning jumps from their fingertips to the guy’s shoulder, like a taser, throwing him a few feet back against the wall. He doesn’t drop the gun, but it’s kicked out of his hand so fast that Gillian wonders whether superspeed is in play here, too. 

She hears a siren whoop behind her, just once, and realizes the only way for the guy to go is straight into the arms of the police. He realizes it too, and glances at his gun, which the Conduit kicks further away right before zapping him again. Gillian keeps waiting for the figure to open fire and take the criminal out. It’s obvious that whoever it is has enough power to kill, and with shots fired there’s a good enough excuse to do so, but it never comes.

“I’ll turn myself in,” the guy says, dropping the bag, “just don’t fry me.”

After a second’s hesitation where Gillian can hear and see the officers start to leave their cars, the hooded figure steps aside and extends an arm as if to say, ‘be my guest.’

He runs right into the arms of the police, trying to run _through_ them, and Gillian disappears down another alley because she doesn’t feel like being questioned. It’s frustrating that she’s not getting the coverage she wants. She can try to write about this, but in a lot of ways it’s a non-event--no injuries, nothing that really has anything to do with a Conduit at all. A guy with some decent martial arts training and some serious guts could have done the same thing. She’s watching the video on her phone, impressed by the quality, when a voice startles her coming around the corner she just rounded herself.

“Hey,” a woman says, and Gillian gasps, clutching her phone to her chest.

The hood of her sweatshirt is down now but she’s still wearing a dark baseball cap, dark enough that Gillian can’t see her face for a moment until she turns a bit in the streetlight.

“I’m a little lost,” the woman says, “can I borrow your phone?”

And Gillian can’t think to do anything other than hand it over. 

It takes two seconds for her to regret it. The woman--and this close it’s so clear that she’s a woman that Gillian isn’t sure how she missed it before--doesn’t even try to use the phone. Her eyes turn blue, bright, electric blue, and Gillian watches her hand close around the phone. The phone crackles and pops and smokes and the Conduit hands it back.

“Thanks,” the Conduit says, her smile a hundred watts, and then she turns to go.

Holding the ruined phone in her hand and thinking of the deadline she now has to rush to meet, Gillian gets a surge of exhausted adrenaline that makes her brave in a stupid way, fight or flight instinct taking a turn for the worse.

“Hey!” she calls out, and the other woman stops, but doesn’t turn around. “You could have just asked me to delete it.”

The Conduit looks over her shoulder, but her smile is different now, thin-lipped and tired. Gillian feels like she understands that. This doesn’t look like someone who could kill.

“In this state,” the Conduit says, “taking a picture or a video of someone without their consent is illegal. I fight crime. Just doing my job.”

“Well,” Gillian says, “I’m just doing mine.”

The grin turns smirky just before the Conduit turns away and starts to walk again.

“Have a good night,” she calls back, and Gillian sighs.

-

Meghan hates break-ins.

She especially hates the ones that she gets to before the burglar has left the building. She doesn’t like to use her powers inside, where she might damage someone’s property, where she can be trapped, but stopping the bad guy has to come first. That’s how she finds herself inside the back room of a local antique store on a Friday night while the club next door is still bumping. It makes sense to try and rob a place like this right in the middle of a busy night. Everyone’s too busy clubbing next door or responding to the noise complaints _from_ the club to notice.

Everyone but Meghan.

“Drop them,” she says, gesturing at the guns in the guys’ hands. They look at each other, then at her--just a taller-than-average woman in dark sweats with her hood pulled up and a beanie hiding her hair.

“By the time the police get here we’ll be long gone, sweetheart,” the brawn says, and the brain laughs, a joyless, clicking sound that grates Meghan’s nerves. She usually tries not to talk to them, but tonight she can’t help herself. The humming starts in her bones and she lets it, flexing her fingers.

“Don’t worry,” she says, as her palms start to warm, “I’m not calling the police.” Not yet.

When they’re tied up in the middle of the store, she does call the police. More accurately, she calls Kacey, who calls the police from the pay phone outside her apartment with a voice-changer for an anonymous tip, like she always does.

Meghan’s barely outside again when she hears the first siren. For a moment she panics, trying to decide which way to go, reminding herself that running is the best way to get noticed. She doesn’t want to go into the club, can’t imagine the crush of countless bodies doing anything to help her, even if she’d be anonymous there. She’s trying to steel herself to go in when she sees the reporter from last week standing a little further down the alley, a new--well, old--phone in one hand.

“I didn’t take a picture,” she says, “I’ll show you, just please don’t fry this one.”

The sirens slow and quiet, and Meghan can see the lights dancing off the wall and knows they’re not from the club. She tugs down her hood, stuffs the beanie in her front pocket, and takes a few steps forward.

“Please,” the reporter says, “listen, I can’t exactly afford to keep replacing my phone, okay? If I could I wouldn’t be out here chasing trouble.”

“I’m not trouble,” Meghan says indignantly, closing the other woman’s hand around her phone. Maybe if the cops see two women talking in an alley they won’t bother to look or ask.

Or maybe--especially if they look like they’re arguing--they will.

“Kiss me,” Meghan says suddenly, breathless when she hears footsteps.

“ _What?_ ” the taller woman asks, but the footsteps sound like boots, not heels or sneakers, so Meghan doesn’t wait for her to get with the program. Instead she half-jumps, half-backs them into the wall, reaching up with a hand in the reporter’s thin blue jacket and pulling her down into the kind of kiss someone might expect two drunk clubbers to partake in. Messy. Messy and desperate.

She’s pleasantly surprised when the kiss gets reciprocated. It’s a good kiss, actually, even if they’ve gone from ice cold to scalding, even if Meghan is wondering what’s on that phone, wondering whether this entire situation is going to make headlines tomorrow. 

The footsteps come closer, so Meghan really tries to sell it, tilting her head and cupping the other woman’s face in both hands, then dragging them down along her neck and chest. It doesn’t stop the officers from turning a flashlight on them, and for a moment Meghan is panicking again, wondering what they can see. Even just her profile--

But then her back hits the wall and all the air leaves her lungs. She’s gripping the reporter by the arms, gasping mostly out of surprise, suddenly shielded by the fact that it’s her neck being kissed, now, so that the police can only see the other woman’s face, not hers.

“Come on,” she hears, and the light moves away. She doesn’t relax until the footsteps are gone, but even then the reporter doesn’t quite stop what she’s doing until Meghan says, letting go of her shoulders, “They’re gone.”

The taller woman takes a step back, clearing her throat.

“What’s your name?” Meghan asks suddenly, which is stupid because she knows she won’t answer if she’s asked the same. She can tell the other woman is trying to steel herself. Her shoulders are squared again and she’s pretending like they weren’t just pressed against each other with their hands all over each other. She’s doing a pretty good job, too.

“Apps,” she says coldly, and Meghan raises an eyebrow. It’s a name she recognizes.

“Gillian Apps.”

She’s seen that name before under headlines that made Kacey steam with anger. She’s just kissed someone who thinks she should be handed over to the D.U.P. immediately, someone who thinks of her as a criminal inherently, but the thing is, Gillian kissed her back. None of it makes sense.

“Well,” Meghan says, “thanks for the cover, Gillian.”

Meghan has a habit of just showing up. She doesn’t live with Kacey, but she might as well, considering that she has a key and lets herself in at half past midnight with very little ceremony.

“Oh, good,” Kacey says, “you’re alive, I can go to bed.”

“What,” Meghan says, “you don’t want to hear all the gossip? All the shit I got up to tonight?”

“Trust me,” Kacey says, “I’ll find out all about it tomorrow.”

“Not all of it,” Meghan says, swinging over the top of Kacey’s couch like it’s nothing. She flops onto it with her feet in Kacey’s lap, and Kacey frowns at a bruise she can see the beginnings of when Meghan’s shirt rides up a little bit.

“How’d you get that?” Kacey asks, and Meghan pulls her shirt down.

“Listen,” Meghan says, “I’m trying to tell you something.” 

Kacey sighs. She gets up from the couch and comes back with an ice pack and she doesn’t ask about the bruise again. Meghan won’t tell her anyway, because she knows Kacey would rather not know. The details of her night job make Kacey more squeamish than the details of her day job. And she sees a lot of bodily fluids during her day job. Meghan ignores the aches and pains for Kacey’s sake, mostly, but she takes the ice pack.

“Thanks,” Meghan mumbles, and for a second her composure falls when the ice hits her skin. Kacey shifts closer to her, protectively, and Meghan breathes in through her nose until the moment passes.

“I had a run-in with someone dangerous tonight,” Meghan says, quietly.

Gillian, though, hadn’t appeared dangerous at all. That’s what throws Meghan the most. She might be tall, but Gillian looks nothing like the person Meghan imagined behind those articles. The hatred in them, directed at people like her, is something she can’t even begin to attach to the version of Gillian she’s met. Gillian had seemed annoyed by her at best.

“What kind of dangerous?” Kacey asks, trying for a conversational tone and missing by a mile. She rests her hand on Meghan’s calf, and Meghan squeezes her hand, sitting up so that they can make eye contact.

“I’m fine,” she says, “I promise. But listen...that article you sent me the other day about the D.U.P.? I met the author today.”

Kacey screws her face up. It’s almost a comical look on her, like a little kid’s face on Kacey’s body.

“That bitch?” she asks, and Meghan laughs. Kacey speaks over it.

“Did you taser her?” she asks, “Tell me you tasered her.”

“Actually,” Meghan says, “I used her as my cover, and it worked.”

“Fuck,” Kacey says, more violently than Meghan expected, “she knows who you are? Fuck, Meghan, that’s--that’s bad. I cannot overstate how bad that is. How do you know she’s not out there busting us wide open right now?”

“I didn’t tell her anything,” Meghan reassures her, “she doesn’t know my name, or anything like that, I fried her phone, I know she has no footage of me. All I did was kiss her so the police wouldn’t look too hard at me and then I left.”

“What?” Kacey asks. Her voice has gotten shrill, and Meghan can’t stop giggling at her. She knows it’s serious, but she’s deliriously tired and she has a nine hour shift starting in six hours, and it’s _funny_. Her life is hilarious, and absurd, like a comic book from the eighties.

“She’s a great kisser,” she says, and Kacey turns bright red. “Maybe better than you,” Meghan adds, and Kacey reaches over to cover Meghan’s mouth with her hand.

“Stop talking,” Kacey says, “god, stop fucking laughing, you psychopath, this is _bad_.”

“It’s fine,” Meghan says, “she’s terrified of me, and like I said, I destroyed her phone. What is she going to do, write an article about how a Conduit jumped her in an alley? Who’s going to believe that?”

-

Gillian knows that nobody will believe her.

She has passed through the realm of radical into the realm of the truly fucking crazy, with no proof and nothing to show for her sleepless night other than the bags under her eyes. Her office is used to seeing those; she doesn’t often sleep well, and nobody ever asks her what’s up anymore, not after months and years of her deflecting their concern. She doesn’t want it. She needs the silence of her corner office to process.

The Conduit she’s been chasing down for months is not even remotely what she expected. She has more to write about than she ever has, the biggest breaking news being that the vigilante roaming the streets and causing massive problems for the police force is a woman, and she can’t write a word. She has no proof. 

“Fuck,” she hisses, clicking violently through her email. “God dammit.”

It was a good kiss. Some part of her knows that’s a large percentage of why she’s angry. It had been a good kiss, but that in and of itself is embarrassing, demoralizing. The Conduit took whatever she wanted--Gillian’s phone, her time, and that kiss--and left Gillian feeling like a blushing teenager after her first run-in with physical contact. That had to be the point, to make her feel helpless and childish. Gillian wonders for a few seconds whether it’s possible the Conduit had a secondary power, something to do with pheromones and sexual desire, but that’s too ridiculous even for her, even off the deep end. 

With nothing left to delete from her inbox she has no choice but to draw up a plan.

-

“Do you ever recognize one of them?” Kacey asks over the lip of her beer bottle, and Meghan looks around the bar, shrugging noncommittally. 

“I don’t know, “ she says, “I don’t look for them.”

The truth is that she doesn’t want to look for people she’s run into before, at night, as someone else. She’s fairly confident nobody would recognize her, but on the off chance someone would, staring at them would be a great way to alert them of her presence. She keeps her head down. It’s easier that way. She reaches across the table for one of Kacey’s fries, moving slowly, trying to sneak under Kacey’s nose while Kacey’s eyes are on the bar.

“Stop,” Kacey says, swatting her hand, “it’s not my fault your pita and hummus wasn’t filling enough.”

“It was,” Meghan says, “but I’m craving salt,” and Kacey pushes the salt shaker her way as if that’s going to help.

Meghan is so busy slapping Kacey’s hands out of the way and trying for another fry that she doesn’t even notice Gillian approaching them, until Kacey looks up and turns red. Meghan looks up too, and Gillian stands awkwardly beside their table with one hand on the back of the empty chair. That only lasts a moment before she pulls it out and sits down, and Kacey is suddenly so twitchy that Meghan is briefly more concerned about that than the possibility that the D.U.P. are outside just waiting for her to leave.

“Oh, hey,” Meghan says cheerfully, watching Gillian grapple with herself, “I’d ask you if you come here often but I know you don’t because I’m here all the time.”

“Don’t tell her that,” Kacey hisses, but Meghan’s already riding the high of skirting danger. Nothing can touch her when she’s like this.

“I’m not scared of you,” Gillian says, but she doesn’t sound entirely sure. Meghan watches Kacey’s jaw tick for a few seconds before she turns back to Gillian.

“You are,” she corrects, and Gillian turns almost as red as Kacey. “But,” Meghan continues, “you’re obviously more curious about me than you are scared of me. What I want to know is, how’d you figure out I’d be here?”

“Good question,” Kacey says, “what the fuck are you doing here?” For the first time Gillian turns and really looks at Kacey. Watching Gillian and Kacey size each other up is hilarious, enough so that Meghan is stifling laughter in the heel of her hand before Gillian decides to ignore Kacey and turns back to her. She tries to imagine one of the hundreds of times Kacey has told her about Gillian hanging around crime scenes, and is surprised Kacey hasn’t found an excuse to detain her yet.

“Actually,” Gillian says, “I went back to the scene of the crime,” and Kacey hisses, kicking Gillian and Meghan both under the table.

“Someone could hear you,” she says, as if there’s still something left to lose. Meghan doesn’t have the heart to tell her that the place is probably bugged already, even if GIllian isn’t.

“Okay,” Meghan says, “first of all, I didn’t commit a crime last night. Second of all, all that means is that you got lucky this place was closeby.”

“I did,” Gillian agrees. After a few seconds she adds, “refusing to register properly is a crime.”

Kacey has gone from bright red to pale now, as if she’s realized how dire the situation probably is. Meghan wants to squeeze her hand or something, but she’s hoping that Kacey will be able to get out of this unscathed, somehow, so she doesn’t make a move either way.

“Sure,” Meghan agrees, “but I didn’t do that last night. I did that when I turned eighteen.”

Gillian looks away. Meghan takes the opportunity to look for a microphone, but also to notice the strong line of Gillian’s jaw, the way the tip of her nose is just a little bit upturned. It’s cute. Meghan feels like laughing again.

“Look,” Gillian says, “I’m not turning you in.”

“Well that’s good,” Meghan says, “because I was really enjoying flirting with you.”

“ _Meghan_ ,” Kacey groans.

“I believe you,” Meghan tells Gillian, and she’s surprised to find that she means it.

“I don’t,” Kacey chimes in.

Gillian holds Meghan’s gaze for a moment, and then plucks the menu from in front of Kacey as if the entire conversation hadn’t happened at all.

“So,” she says, “what’s good?”

“Anthony’s,” Kacey says, “it’s nextdoor.”

“They make a good Spanish omelet,” Meghan says, immediately countering with, “since you’re not turning me in, want to tell me why?”

“No,” Gillian says, “not really. I’m not a breakfast-for-dinner kind of person. How big are their burgers?”

“Big enough to choke you,” Kacey says, “hopefully.”

-

Gillian does some detective work. It’s not what she’s paid for, but she’s paid to write and she has nothing she can write, so she uses her time the next morning to look up her good friend Officer Bellamy. It had never occurred to her that the prickly, weedy officer she frequently ran into while scoping out crime scenes could be connected to the vigilante herself, but in hindsight, it’s more or less genius. Having someone on the inside allows the Conduit to cover her tracks seamlessly. The officer can throw her department off the trail and ensure things get swept under the rug.

She has no information on the loose cannon, still. No name. But the officer is someone she can look up, and she does. It surprises her to see that Kacey hadn’t come through the police academy at first, but the more she thinks about it the more sense it makes. She’s self-made, she has that edge to her, like she’s been grinding from day one. It frustrates Gillian that she has to respect that.

It’s impossible to find any indication of her social life anywhere. She doesn’t seem to have a Facebook account, and her Instagram is locked down so that Gillian can’t even get a good look at her icon, which appears to be a black dog, anyway. Kacey’s not stupid, so it stands to reason that no trace of Meghan would be easy to find, but Gillian had hoped for a little bit more than this. All she can do now is shout Kacey’s college cheer at her the next time they run into each other. It’s as if the deeper Gillian looks, the less things make any sense.

“You look burnt out,” her boss says to her, when she wanders into the break room to make some more coffee, “take a break, if you need to, Gillian. A couple of days won’t hurt.”

She hates the way he says her name. The ‘G’ is just on this side of ‘too hard’. 

 

“No,” she says, “I’m alright. Thank you.”

“Conduits don’t sleep, eh,” he jokes, and she smiles grimly at him, but she wonders.

-

It’s a stupid idea.

Meghan knows it, but the fact that the idea is stupid is exactly what she likes about it. Working overnights frees her to stop muggings and other miscellaneous crime on her off nights, but when she wakes up bored and restless at noon it seems like something that would be fun to try.

She debates whether or not to cut the sandwich diagonally for a lot longer than she debates walking straight into Gillian’s office. At the reception desk, she leans onto the counter and offers her winningest smile to the balding man peering up at her.

“Yes?” he asks, and Meghan holds up her little brown paper bag.

“I’m bringing Gill lunch,” she says cheerily. 

He blinks at her. For a second she wonders if she had the address wrong, but after a few seconds he grins back at her, leaning back in his chair.

“Well damn,” he says, “alright, go on in. She’s in 303.”

It takes Meghan a few minutes to find 303. It’s in the back next to the copier room, which seems like a good place except that it’s dingy and not well-lit. The name tag on Gillian’s door is peeling. Meghan runs a hand through her hair and slips into the office.

The look on Gillian’s face when she looks up from her computer is priceless. Meghan almost laughs, but instead she leans into the doorjamb, raising an eyebrow.

“Conduits,” she quotes, “have to assimilate if they are to be functioning members of the society that the rest of us live in.”

Gillian crosses her arms, glaring.

“How did you even get in here?” she asks, and Meghan approaches the desk, placing the bag in front of Gillian with a flourish.

“Just bringing you lunch, babe,” she says, and Gillian turns bright red.

“Will you close the door?” Gillian hisses, and Meghan enjoys her squirming uncomfortably for another few seconds before she moves to do so.

“Oh,” she says as she’s going towards the door, “don’t worry, we can be quick--” and when she closes the door Gillian is even redder than before. 

“They’re uncomfortable now,” she points out, “they’ll want to pretend they didn’t hear anything, so they won’t be paying attention. On purpose.”

“You’ve never worked in an office,” Gillian grumbles, and Meghan beams at her, enjoying this far too much more than she ought to. Kacey will kill her if she survives this.

“It’s part of my charm,” Meghan says, perching on the edge of Gillian’s desk, “don’t you think?”

Gillian doesn’t answer her. She takes the sandwich out of the bag and regards it suspiciously, unwrapping it and beginning to take it apart. Meghan almost gripes at her for it--it really was a very well put together sandwich--but she’d rather watch Gillian’s hands.

“I don’t like pickles,” Gillian murmurs, peeling them off of the sandwich and setting them aside.

“Well,” Meghan says, “I kind of assumed that, after you got handsy with me in an alley the other night, but I wanted to make sure.”

Gillian doesn’t even acknowledge that. Instead she frowns deeply at the sandwich, checking under the lettuce, and looks up at Meghan.

“Where’s the cheese?” she asks, and Meghan blinks at her.

“The...did you hear what I said?”

“How,” Gillian says, “could you make a sandwich without cheese? A sandwich is--even just ham and cheese is a sandwich. Ham and lettuce and pickles and all this other, whatever you put in here, that’s not a sandwich, that’s a salad on some bread.”

“Sprouts,” Meghan says helpfully. After a few seconds of Gillian staring at her, she clears her throat and adopts a fake reporter tone, sitting up straight. “Conduits,” she says, “lack the basic sense of taste and the related sense of right from wrong, both of which must be taught with a steady, patient hand.”

Gillian takes a spiteful bite out of the sandwich and Meghan considers her more carefully. It’s impossible to tell just from looking at someone, but she wonders if she might catch it, anyway, if she should be able to recognize it in someone else. 

“You know what would be clever?” Meghan asks. “Hiding in plain sight. Making everyone think you’re one of them, because how could you be anything but normal when you hate all these freaks so much, when--”

“You should go,” GIllian says suddenly. Her voice is entirely different now, quiet and level and deadly serious. Meghan takes it as the warning it is. 

“Sorry,” she says, and when Gillian doesn’t blink she adds, “about the cheese,” and turns to go. Gillian doesn’t stop her. Meghan takes the opportunity to plaster a smug smile on her face before she leaves, for her benefit but for Gillian’s too. She’s learned almost nothing.

Well, not nothing. She’s learned some things. She’s learned that Gillian hates pickles and won’t eat a sandwich without cheese on it.

-

_The surge in Conduit-related positivity we see today is a natural phenomenon. The fear of Conduits does not extend to anyone younger than twenty, too young to remember a time before the D.U.P. existed to ensure their ability to say something so ludicrous in relative safety._

Gillian closes her eyes and deletes the entire paragraph for the sixth time.

Ludicrous is writing as if _she_ can remember a time before the D.U.P. existed. She can remember when it was new, when it hadn’t organized yet, and she can remember when Conduits got their name--even if she was young, barely ten-- and of course she can remember before registration was mandatory, back when the Beast was loose, the reports of deaths and buildings wiped clear off the map. They all know why it’s necessary. She shouldn’t have to repeat it all over again.

Writing this piece makes her sound like the D.U.P. is feeding and housing and clothing her. Hunched over on her couch in an apartment barely big enough for her to breathe in, she wishes that were the case. Maybe the D.U.P. would heat her apartment if she explicitly endorsed them.

She stretches, rolling her neck out, and the two second break from being annoyed at her piece means that she’s immediately, again, thinking of Meghan and the sandwich. Sleep won’t come easy if it comes at all. It’s that kind of night, the kind of night where she still can’t decide whether she wants the picture on her dresser facing down or facing up, so she turns on the police scanner just to have something to do.

She actually does doze off, her head resting back against the couch. When the radio crackles with static she jumps awake, groaning at the stiffness right back in her neck, and then she notices the urgency of the voices over the radio and falls quiet.

“A power line went out or something. Transformer burst. Something.”  
“I’m seeing a victim... Pierce Street side B, guy on the ground, doesn’t look like a GSW.”  
“How the hell do you get a victim from a busted transformer?”

Meghan. It has to be Meghan. Gillian waits, pressing the heels of her hands into her eyes, unsure why she dreads hearing that this _is_ a victim, someone dead or close to it. She can’t imagine Meghan doing that. She’s never seen Meghan even come close, but Meghan’s a Conduit with power obviously beyond what Gillian’s seen, and maybe without Gillian around to witness it--

“No,” someone says over the scanner, “guy’s fine. Tied up. Building looks like a B and E, though.”

Gillian exhales. She turns off the police scanner and goes into her bedroom, which is a strong word for a room barely big enough to actually hold her bed. At her dresser she pauses. The picture is down, has been for the last few months that Gillian herself has been down, but she feels guilty leaving it like that, like she’s depriving Lianne of something even though she knows how absurd that is. She rights the picture but she doesn’t look at it. She can see it in her head without having to, anyway.

She doesn’t want to think about Lianne tonight, and she doesn’t want to think about Meghan, either, but there’s nothing else. She realizes it all at once, and it feels like someone has punched her in the stomach--there’s nothing else to her life but Conduits and their victims and writing about them. She never thinks about or writes about anything else. She has no unrelated hobbies, no friends, and as far as dedicating her life to a cause goes, she hasn’t accomplished much of anything, either, unless influence were to be solely calculated based on long, near-incomprehensible Facebook rants.

Gillian doesn’t try to find Meghan again for two weeks. She starts working out again, just to have something to do with herself that isn’t obsessive thinking, and it works well for her. Maybe too well, actually, because as soon as she can tell she’s not going to get any sleep, she ends up doing both-- pull ups in her doorway with the bar that she’s installed, with the police scanner running in the background. She tells herself it’s because music would wake her neighbors, but she knows better.

She hears things that sound like they could be Meghan twice in the first week and only once in the second. That weekend, holding a plank until all she can think about is the way her stomach burns, she hears another.

“It’s that thing,” a guy says over the radio, “the Conduit that keeps bagging ‘em.”

“We gotta find this guy,” someone else says, “he’s making us look like we don’t do shit.”

The next voice is one that Gillian recognizes, and she drops her plank to listen.

“With all due respect, Malko,” Kacey says, “you _don’t_ do shit.”

“Aren’t you off the clock as of two minutes ago?” the guy responds, “I’m surprised you’re not snoring already.”

“Keep talking and I will be,” Kacey replies. After a second she says, “Marv, gimme a location and I’ll check it out.”

“You’re off the clock,” the original guy repeats. He sounds young. Gillian imagines him, doughy and pale, with a cartoonish moustache.

“Yeah,” Kacey says, “so you and Malko can go pretend to do your jobs while I clean up that mess.”

“If you find him I’m gonna be pissed,” Malko says. Gillian has to admit she’s more than a little impressed. Listening to Kacey she would never guess that Kacey knew anything at all--she sounds just like the rest of them.

“Well, now I have to, just to spite you,” Kacey says. “Marv. Location.”

When he feeds it to her, Gillian jots it down on her hand with the first pen she can find. She pulls a sweatshirt over her head and is out the door as soon as possible, regretting her decision immediately in the cold. Probably Meghan will already be gone and she’ll be stuck trying to avoid Kacey’s ire. Or her handcuffs.

By the time Gillian gets there her entire face is cold from the bike, and her flashing lights alert Kacey immediately. Kacey, of course, doesn’t have her lights on at all, but Gillian can still see her glaring.

“I’m off the clock,” Kacey says, “but if you think that’s going to stop me from arresting you for trespassing or loitering you have another thing coming.”

“Just going for a ride,” Gillian says, leaning her bike against the wall. Kacey gives it, and then Gillian, an intensely dubious once-over. Gillian takes a good look at the scene. A door has been busted out of a warehouse that looks more or less abandoned. Kacey shines a flashlight inside, but it’s too dusty and too dark to see much.

“So,” Gillian says, “what happened here?”

“Boogeyman,” Kacey mutters.

“Boo,” Meghan says, appearing behind them, and Kacey _does_ jump, just enough for Meghan to crack up, leaning against the hood of the cruiser.

“Stop that,” Kacey says, flashing the light in Meghan’s face briefly, “you’re going to dent the hood.”

Meghan makes a face, and Gillian has to fight the urge to grin at it. She’s not here for that, not here to notice how expressive Meghan is or the way her sweats hang low on her hips, which is obvious now that she’s leaning back against the cruiser. She’s there to...she’s not sure why she’s there.

“You can’t go around scaring cops,” Kacey continues, pocketing her flashlight on the hip where her gun isn’t holstered.

“I don’t,” Meghan says, “I was just scaring you.”

“You know, I resent that,” Kacey continues, and Gillian watches their exchange with a realization dawning on her that’s so obvious she can’t believe she missed it at the diner. Meghan catches her and ignores Kacey completely to focus on Gillian, crossing her arms.

“Alright, what is it?” she asks, and Gillian shrugs, raising her hands palms up.

“Nothing,” she says, “nothing, I just hadn’t realized you guys were exes.”

Meghan laughs and Kacey glares, and that’s all Gillian needs to see to know that she’s right. She looks at Kacey because it’s easier than trying to understand Meghan standing, laughing, in front of a cop who should have turned her in to the D.U.P. years ago.

“So,” Gillian says, “how long ago was it?”

“I don’t know,” Kacey says, “how long ago did someone shove that stick up your ass?”

“Wow,” Gillian says, “that recent?”

Meghan laughs again and Gillian tries not to feel too good about the fact that it was her who made it happen. 

“Years,” Meghan says, “it’s been years, don’t worry.”

“I wasn’t worried,” Gillian lies. She refuses to admit why she _was_ worried, even to herself, but she can at least admit to herself that it’s a lie.

“I’m going home,” Kacey says, getting into the cruiser, but Meghan doesn’t get off of the hood right away. She watches Kacey get into the car, and they make eye contact through the windshield for a moment, Kacey pouting, Meghan grinning. Eventually, Kacey flips on her lights, and Meghan laughs again delightedly before she lets Kacey leave.

And then they’re alone.

Meghan turns her attention to Gillian, who shuffles uncomfortably, her heart in her throat. Meghan makes her nervous, but it’s not so much anymore because Gillian is afraid she’s going to be attacked or hurt or anything else like that. Meghan has had plenty of chances to hurt her or kill her and has done nothing but pry and flirt with her.

Still, having Meghan’s focus all on her is nervewracking. Meghan is very calm and confident, the kind of woman who can look at you and see things, and Gillian isn’t sure that she wants to be seen.

“Why do you write what you do?” Meghan asks. There’s no pretense, no segue, just her question, and it’s not the kind of question that feels like an attack. It’s an honest question and she sounds nothing but curious about it even though, Gillian thinks, she would have every right to be annoyed or offended, even if everything Gillian has ever written has been true, or had felt true when she wrote it.

Gillian looks away and shrugs.

“It pays the bills,” she says, but when she checks, Meghan doesn’t look terribly convinced.

“You know what I mean,” Meghan says. “I know that Conduits are a hot topic, but the way you write about us--that’s different. You write about it like it’s personal.”

Gillian does everything she can not to remember anything specific about Lianne other than her existence. She’s gotten good at it, but she does have to pause for a second, and she knows that Meghan is reading her expression as best she can.

“It’s personal for everyone,” she says instead, which isn’t true and doesn’t sound it.

“So something happened to you,” Meghan presses, and Gillian turns away from her completely, fumbling with her bike. She almost turns the light on, but she doesn’t. She stands with her hands on the handlebars for a few seconds instead, breathing. Running from Meghan would give her the answer she wants. Instead Gillian turns back to her.

“You’re not my therapist,” she says coolly, and Meghan presses her lips together.

“I’m sorry,” Meghan says, and it takes Gillian so for surprise that she blinks and drops her guard for a second or two. “I’m sorry if someone hurt you,” Meghan says, “I’m sorry if it was someone like me.”

“It wasn’t me,” Gillian blurts. Meghan’s expression changes, and Gillian looks up, following the lines of the buildings, trying to keep her breath steady. She can’t avoid telling Meghan now and she knows it.

“It was my girlfriend,” she says, but that doesn’t sound like enough. It makes Lianne sound like someone she’d met six months before instead of four years before. It makes her sound like someone casual instead of someone Gillian was almost ready to propose to. “My partner,” she amends, and that sounds better, sounds right.

When she looks down again Meghan’s face is twisted up in what looks at first glance like pity, and Gillian hates her for it briefly before she can see that it isn’t that at all. 

“A Conduit killed her,” Gillian continues, because she has to say it all, now, “five years ago. Almost six.”

Meghan is silent for a few seconds. Gillian isn’t sure what to do or what to say anymore now that it’s out there. It’s something that everyone in her life knows has happened to her but not something she’s talked about for ages, and it’s strange to have said it again, strange to remember that she was there. 

“And they made you write about it,” Meghan says, shaking her head, “I’m sorry, I...know I already said that, I just don’t know what else I can say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Gillian says. After a few seconds she adds, “they didn’t make me do anything. I mean, I wanted to write about it. For a while writing about it helped. I wanted to try and warn people that sometimes, maybe a lot of times, the D.U.P. wasn’t really enough to keep everyone safe, just like, you know, sometimes the police aren’t enough, either.”

“Conduits aren’t criminals,” Meghan starts to say, and Gillian doesn’t bristle like she would have a month ago.

“They don’t have to be,” she says. Meghan stiffens a little bit like she wants to continue the conversation, but after a few seconds she relaxes again, taking a breath, and Gillian, desperate for a truce, tries to turn the tables.

“Why do you do what you do?” she asks, and Meghan looks up at her, surprised but not unpleasantly.

“Well,” Meghan says, “I’m a pediatric ICU nurse. I know that’s not what you meant, but it’s not random, I’ve just always wanted to help people. Being so close to Kacey…” she shrugs, looking sheepish, “I got to hear all the time about things the police couldn’t handle, whether it was because they didn’t have the time or they were understaffed. Things I was pretty sure I could handle.”

Gillian presses her lips together. She wants to say that’s vigilante justice, that doing things like that never works outside of fairytales, but she knows better than to open her mouth. Still, Meghan seems to be able to read her mind.

“It’s worked out,” she says. “I don’t hurt anyone. Not any more than someone would get hurt if I happened to be carrying a citizen-grade Taser and they mugged me. I’m very careful. I don’t administer justice, I just make it easier for the cops to catch them, the cops still decide what to do with them once they’re caught.”

Meghan believes so firmly that she’s right. Gillian can see it, can see that there isn’t even a shadow of guilt in Meghan’s mind. She stands tall, her eyes bright, and confesses to Gillian enough to put her away for a long time. Maybe forever. 

“I can understand that you want to help,” Gillian says, finally. She can tell that she’s disappointing Meghan the moment she opens her mouth, and she tries not to let that bother her. “But I can’t condone how you’re doing it. I don’t think it’s right. I think it’s dangerous, what you’re capable of.”

Meghan shuts down. Gillian watches it happen. It’s not so much hurt that flickers across Meghan’s face as it is understanding, and in a few seconds the passion she’d carried when she explained herself is gone, replaced by something cool and composed and a little bit distant. Gillian feels small again.

“I understand,” Meghan says.

-

Meghan doesn’t see Gillian again for two weeks.

Kacey does, though, and she won’t shut up about it.

“She’s everywhere,” Kacey says, “it pisses me off. Every single night that I’m out there she’s out there. I’m sure the nights I’m off she’s still out there. Like she’s fucking...waiting for me to slip up.”

“I think she’s waiting for _me_ to slip up,” Meghan says. She’s avoided Gillian so far, but she’s not confident that she can keep doing it. It seems inevitable that Gillian will catch up to her eventually. Meghan just can’t figure out what it is that Gillian wants from her.

“You want to know the weirdest part?” Kacey asks. It’s a rhetorical question, but Meghan doesn’t really want to know. Thinking about it makes her stomach twist. For a few minutes she had thought she might be able to convince GIllian that she was at least helpful. There was a part of her that had hoped GIllian might be able to see her as some kind of hero, but that’s the embarrassing part, the part she buries. There’s no spandex here. No fun superhero names. Lots of opportunities to die and no opportunities to be Captain America.

“I think she’s worried about you,” Kacey says.

“Worried about what I’m doing to people,” Meghan corrects, and Kacey shakes her head.

“I dunno,” she says, “you’d think, right? Because she’s such a douchebag, the stuff she writes. But as much as she hates my guts...I dunno, Megs.”

Meghan stretches, almost knocking over the lamp on Kacey’s bedside table.

“Let’s go over it again,” she says.

“It’s one in the morning,” Kacey says, “I need to sleep.”

“I have a shift at eight,” Meghan says, “I just want to go over it one more time. I want to be sure.”

-

It feels like something big is coming.

Gillian knows that’s bullshit. Every time something big has happened in her life, it’s been entirely unexpected. There’s no such thing as a premonition, no such thing as a universal energy that holds its breath before something _happens_. But she still feels it.

Tonight, Kacey is more agitated than normal, too, unless Gillian is making it up. She catches sight of Gillian, narrows her eyes, and goes back to what she was doing, scanning a burnt-out husk of a Honda with her flashlight. Her partner is around the other side of the vehicle, crouching, talking to someone on the radio.

“Riveting,” Gillian says. She knows Kacey won’t tell her what’s happening, even if she could, legally.

“If I could tell you to fuck off while in uniform,” Kacey says, “I would do it.”

“Didn’t you just do it?” Gillian asks, and Kacey sniffs.

“What are you gonna do,” she says, “write an article about it? ‘A New York Cop Was Mean to Me?’ Good luck.”

Gillian almost finds it funny how much Kacey hates her, when Meghan had found it so easy to engage with her. She wonders what Meghan told Kacey about their conversation, if she had said anything at all. She wonders where Meghan is.

“Our friend is always one step ahead of me,” she says. It’s stupid, and she knows it the second she said it. There’s any multitude of things for Kacey to snap at her for in that statement. Gillian’s not even sure what she would do or say if Meghan did appear. A question-and-answer article with your friendly neighborhood vigilante. She needs more information. She needs a name, a full name, an occupation, something, and she’s not going to get it out of Kacey by asking.

“C’mere,” Kacey’s partner says, and Kacey gives Gillian one last significant look before she crosses over to the other side of the burnt-out car.

There’s a phone on the center console of the police cruiser. Gillian has a fifty percent chance of ending up with Kacey’s, and maybe a twenty percent chance of not getting caught stealing it. She knows she won’t have the guts to do it, but she stares at the phone through the window of the cruiser, as if she can make it come right to her.

Across the street, something bursts into flame. Gillian instinctively crouches, as if that’s going to save her, and in the chaos afterwards she loses track of Kacey, catching only the rush of two pairs of boots across the empty road and shouting, probably half at her.

By the time she can stand up she knows what she’s going to do. They’ve left the cruiser unlocked. She darts in, grabs the phone, and runs like she’s running from the fire and not from Kacey.

She doesn’t catch her breath until she’s been in her apartment for ten minutes contemplating how stupid she is. That passes when she realizes that Kacey is stupider, stupid enough not to have a password on her phone. Gillian had expected she might have to pay someone to hack into it, or at least Google it, but Kacey’s phone is almost too easy to get into. Her lock screen is a picture of a black dog, too. 

She goes into Kacey’s contacts first. Meghan is there, with her last name and her phone number, but no address. Gillian scribbles the number down, but she’s not sure what she’d do with it. It seems like something she should have. It’s concrete, at least, and it should make her feel better to have something, but she just feels a little sick from the adrenaline.

As far as Gillian can tell, Meghan was telling the truth.

She appears to be a completely normal nurse in her late twenties. She has friends, other than Kacey. There are pictures of Meghan and Kacey out and about, posts on Meghan’s wall about vaccines and running on the weekend and the benefits of whole milk over skim milk. It’s too normal. What finally breaks her is Meghan’s profile picture, with her arm around Kacey and their faces pressed close together, both of them smiling in a way Gillian’s never seen from them. They look like a couple. 

Kacey probably knows that Meghan had to kiss Gillian as a cover. Gillian figures that explains why Kacey hates her so much, and why Meghan laughed when Gillian assumed they were exes, instead of a couple. Meghan was never really flirting with her after all.

Gillian isn’t sure why Meghan and Kacey would lie to her about it, but there are plenty of reasons that they might. The whole thing feels disappointingly absurd and surface-level. Meghan isn’t mysterious. Gillian has no way to spin any of this in a way that people would want to read it. Nobody wants to hear that their child’s nurse zaps civilians in their spare time, outstanding warrants or not.

-

Kacey is antsy, being at the diner where Gillian found them the first time. Meghan ignores her, enjoying the change of pace. It’s been six days since she’s done anything other than work, and she’s getting restless. She hasn’t been out at night. Occasionally she takes breaks like this, but she hates them after a few days, and a week is too long. 

“I can’t believe I lost my fucking phone,” Kacey says, for the thousandth time that week.

“Just go buy a burner phone,” Meghan says, “you’ll find it eventually. It’s gotta be in the cruiser somewhere. Under a seat.”

“I _looked_ ,” Kacey insists, and Meghan shrugs. They eat in silence for a few minutes, Meghan toying with the idea of asking Kacey for a tip. She probably won’t get it that easily--Kacey likes when Meghan has breaks like this--but she could at least try. She’s cut off when Kacey speaks again.

“God dammit,” Kacey mumbles, “I knew this would happen.”

Meghan isn’t surprised when she looks up and sees Gillian walk in. She had hoped Gillian would find them, actually. She’s missed being in trouble this week. Her life has been a little too ordinary. Kacey, on the other hand, seems like she’s moments from launching herself at Gillian’s throat. Gillian is wearing the same dark jacket she was wearing when Meghan kissed her. It fits her shoulders a little bit too well.

Before Meghan can say anything, Gillian reaches into the pocket of the jacket, pulls out a phone, and drops it on the table in front of Kacey.

“You have a boring life, Duggan,” Gillian says, and Meghan’s blood runs cold. Once the surprise passes, and she realizes Gillian is just giving the phone back, she laughs. It’s absurd. It’s hilarious.

Kacey snatches the phone back and leaps to her feet. Meghan can’t seem to stop laughing but she tries, muffling it in her shoulder. Kacey leans into Gillian’s space, and Gillian squares up immediately. Meghan, still delirious, figures that Kacey could probably take her, height difference aside.

“If something happens to her,” Kacey says, quietly enough that Meghan probably wasn’t supposed to hear it, “I’ll kill you.”

It’s sweet for the two seconds it takes before Meghan realizes that Kacey is serious. Meghan is more than slightly invested in whether or not Kacey goes to jail for her.

“I can handle it,” she says, a little abruptly. Both of them stare at her, and she clarifies, crossing her arms. “I can handle her.”

“Whatever,” Gillian says, “you dropped it. I figured I’d give it back.”

“And do some snooping first,” Kacey replies, shoving her phone in her pocket. Gillian looks very tall next to Kacey, but when she shrugs aggressively it makes her seem younger, like a petulant teenager.

“I’m a journalist,” she says, “snooping is what I do. Besides, it’s not like I can prove Peds Barbie is dangerous.”

Kacey screws up her face, half furious and half in an attempt to contain laughter that Meghan knows her well enough to see under the surface. For her part, she doesn’t mind laughing again.

“You could have by now,” she says, “if you really wanted to. But I think we both know that’s not the case anymore.”

“You don’t know anything about me,” Gillian snaps. She leaves without saying anything else, and Kacey returns to the table, blinking, taking her phone out of her pocket to cradle it in her hands. 

“We should do some snooping, too,” Kacey says.

Meghan knows that they don’t need to. Gillian has already told her the only thing Meghan can imagine Kacey could uncover, and she’s not sure she wants Kacey to know, not sure she trusts Kacey, in her current state, to be understanding about Gillian’s response to the attack at the bank.

“Don’t waste your time,” she says, watching Gillian disappear past the edge of the diner’s front windows.

-

The worst thing--worse than Kacey’s obvious hatred of her, worse than the physical attraction to Meghan that Gillian wrestles with for at least half of her day--is that Meghan was right. Gillian is no longer in the game to expose her. Which begs the question of why she’s still in the game at all.

She could disappear again, go back to the way her life was before, let them forget. Turning public opinion against people like Meghan is still helping, even if it’s not the blockbuster that exposing Meghan would have been. But that doesn’t sit right for Gillian, either. Meghan is where all her paths end. She has to do _something_ about Meghan, and she’s not sure what options are left.

Mostly she feels like she should apologize. They had connected before, before she stole Kacey’s phone and invaded Meghan’s privacy, and in hindsight Gillian knows that Meghan would probably have told her anything she asked to know. She stops following Kacey on the police scanner. She stops following the police scanner at all for a few days.

She takes to the streets in the bad parts of town and waits. There’s a different section each night, that she’s cordoned off on an actual physical paper map, because it makes her feel like she’s more in control. She carries pepper spray with her, which probably isn’t enough, but other than the occasional shout her way, nobody comes close to her. They all have business, when she goes out as late as she does. And sooner or later she gets a feel for the places they avoid.

Meghan must have some kind of a system, and Gillian is hell-bent on figuring it out. She’s so focused on that, color coding her map, that she makes the fatal mistake of not looking up enough to make herself appear alert. She doesn’t notice the guy until he has an arm around her throat and a knife pressed just under her jaw.

“Take everything out of your pockets,” he says. Gillian swallows and feels how close the knife is to some very soft, very vital parts of her anatomy.

“I only have a phone,” she says, “I’m not carrying a wallet.”

She’s telling the truth, but he doesn’t seem to like it much. She knows she could reach the pepper spray, but she also knows that the disadvantage to a knife rather than a gun is that he might easily kill her by accident if she tries to spray him. He has two inches on her. She drops the map. She’s about to reach into her pocket for her phone when something rattles above them, at least three stories up, on the fire escape.

It’s probably a cat, she thinks, but he flinches behind her and almost kills her right there. In an effort to give herself a little bit more space she pushes back against him, and then, with no warning, the world turns a bright, sparking blue.

There’s a pain in her collarbone, a sharp, searing pain, and she gasps, thinking that she must be about to choke to death on her own blood. It doesn’t happen. Instead she stumbles, turning around to see Meghan crouched over the man who mugged her, dressed in black from head to toe and holding him down with one hand around his throat.

He’s kicking, but not like he’s trying to get away. He’s kicking as if he’s being electrocuted. He is being electrocuted.

“Stop,” Gillian gasps, “Jesus Christ, you’re going to fucking kill him.”

Meghan stands, leaving him unconscious, but breathing heavily, underneath her.

“You’re welcome for saving your suicidal ass,” she spits, and Gillian feels a rush of what she _knows_ is arousal before she gets equally angry with herself and Meghan.

“I wasn’t trying to get killed,” she says, which is a weak defense, and not entirely true.

“You’re a horrible liar,” Meghan says, but her eyes dip to Gillian’s collarbone. Gillian remembers the cut as soon as she notices that, and her hand flies up to cover it. Blood seeps through her fingers and she toys with the idea of allowing herself to pass out. Meghan probably could not actually carry her, unless she has some superstrength in addition to her electrical manipulation.

“Come on,” Meghan says, grabbing Gillian by the forearm, “it won’t be the first time someone has had an open wound on the D train this time of night.”

-

Meghan doesn’t let go of GIllian’s arm until they’re in the station. It’s as if she’d forgotten, and realizes it suddenly, dropping Gillian’s arm as if--well, as if she’s been shocked. Gillian crosses her arms. Her collarbone protests, and bleeds a little more.

“If you publish my address,” Meghan says, “Kacey will kill you.”

“Trust me,” Gillian says, watching the train arrive, “I’m more afraid of Kacey than anything I’ve seen while covering crime in this city, and that’s saying something.”

Meghan shakes her head, but she’s smiling even if she’s stinging. It’s stupid. She can’t remember a time when she didn’t feel like everything _was_ stupid, where Gillian is involved. There’s no reason that Gillian should still be trailing her, that the D.U.P. haven’t already come. Meghan knows, by this point, that they aren’t coming, at least not because of Gillian. What she doesn’t know is why Gillian bothers to do what she’s doing, including almost getting herself killed.

Meghan elects to sit right next to Gillian on the train, despite the empty car. Gillian holds her collarbone, and Meghan tries not to think about it. It’s not bleeding much anymore, but she knows, probably better than Gillian, how close Gillian was to dying. She hadn’t been confident that she could stop it from happening. For a second, when she heard Gillian gasp, she thought she was too late.

It hadn’t been until Gillian turned around to yell at her that she knew she’d succeeded. She doesn’t want to think of what she would have done if that hadn’t been the case. It doesn’t matter; Gillian is brooding silently next to her, taking up a lot of pale, judgmental space.

Or maybe not so judgmental.

“I was looking for you so I could apologize,” Gillian says. The train rattles, and Meghan could swear that her brain rattles along with it. She doesn’t say anything. Gillian continues.

“For the phone,” Gillian says, “for--I didn’t have to steal it. It was stupid.”

“You could have called me,” Meghan says, while she works over the fact that GIllian has just apologized. “I know you have my number.”

Gillian clears her throat. Meghan doesn’t quite want to make eye contact yet, so she stares at Gillian’s knees instead, at the hand resting on Gillian’s thigh, long and surprisingly elegant. It’s not a word she would have expected to use on Gillian or any part of her anatomy, but it’s true. They’re like piano player hands.

“It would have felt kind of stupid to use an invasion of your privacy to apologize for invading your privacy,” Gillian says, as if a single word out of her mouth is reasonable in any way.

“So instead you got yourself mugged,” Meghan says. It’s supposed to be a joke, but it comes out as an accusation. She still has the image in her head of Gillian on the ground, clutching her throat, dying. It didn’t happen, but in Meghan’s brain it’s happening over and over.

“Look,” Gillian says, “I’m sorry. I never said I was doing something smart. I didn’t know how else to find you. I was trying to do it in a respectable way, without--infringing on your space.”

She’s being so honest that Meghan can’t help glancing up to finally make eye contact. GIllian looks exhausted, but more than that she looks real. Meghan has a moment, then, on the train at one in the morning, where she comprehends that Gillian is a whole, complex person, for the first time. It hits her hard. Gillian was a child once. Gillian loved a woman once, a woman who died. It’s a fact that Meghan knew, but not one that she felt, not until then. Gillian’s interest in her is complicated, and Meghan has seen enough to know that fear is part of the appeal.

“I can fix that,” Meghan says, gesturing at Gillian’s collarbone. “I’ll disinfect it and bandage it. You’ll have to buy more bandages, but any pharmacy will have them.”

Gillian nods to herself, breaking eye contact. She’s far away, mentally somewhere else, and Meghan doesn’t blame her. The subway car smells like weed and vomit. It always does. They don’t speak again until they’re in Meghan’s apartment.

“You can go sit,” Meghan says, “it’s gonna take me a second.”

-

Meghan’s apartment isn’t how Gillian imagined it. It looks intensely normal. There are no maps, no police scanner or radio that she can see, no indication of Meghan’s double life. The picture she remembers from Kacey’s phone is framed and hung up on the wall. The more she thinks about it, the more she believes that Meghan was telling the truth about them being exes, unless Kacey is snoring away in the master bedroom waiting for Meghan to come back to bed. It doesn’t feel right to imagine them together _now_ , but a tiny voice in the back of Gillian’s mind wonders if that’s wishful thinking.

It might have something to do with the fact that Meghan has brought her home.

“Take off your shirt,” Meghan says, from the kitchen, where she’s rummaging in cabinets.

Gillian shrugs out of her jacket and her shirt. It’s cool in Meghan’s apartment, so she ends up with goosebumps, feeling like a plucked bird. She’s still bleeding, and now her hand is sticky, too. She’s staring intently at Meghan’s countertops before Meghan comes to kneel in front of her, holding a bandage between her teeth. In one hand she’s holding a cotton swab dipped in alcohol that Gillian can smell. The other hand goes to Gillian’s shoulder, supposedly to stabilize her. 

There’s not much warning. Meghan might be a nurse, but she’s not on the clock now, and it’s obvious she’s not planning on using her bedside manner. She swipes at Gillian’s cut with the alcohol and Gillian inhales sharply through her nose, getting a whiff of Meghan’s shampoo or perfume or detergent. They’re very close together. Meghan on her knees in front of the couch, the proximity, and the sting of the alcohol combine to make Gillian blush. She’s not cold anymore, not with her mind racing the way it is. She wants to take the bandage out from between Meghan’s teeth and kiss her.

She doesn’t. Meghan searches her face for a moment before she sits back on her heels, opens the bandage, and applies it smoothly, the way only someone with years of experience possibly could. Gillian hisses, reaching up to touch the bandage. It’s still burning, and Meghan’s still kneeling between her feet, too close to her. Close enough to kiss her.

Somehow, beyond any logic that Gillian can reason out, Meghan does kiss her. It happens fast, Meghan darting forward to close the space between them, and Gillian is too surprised to kiss her back. She opens her eyes a half a second too early, and catches a glimpse of Meghan pulling back from her, looking completely and utterly sure of herself.

Gillian is still reeling when Meghan stands, pulling her shirt over her head and dropping it at her feet. She blinks, and Meghan walks away, glancing only once over her shoulder. Gillian knows what it means. She’s getting to her feet before she’s quite decided to do it, almost tripping over her own feet to keep up, following Meghan down a hallway while her collarbone continues to sting.

Meghan wants her.

It’s new information, but not information Gillian wants time to process. Not right now, when she could and should be doing other things. Meghan steps out of her sweatpants, and Gillian watches her, feeling like a lewd teenage boy, but unsure what else she can do other than stare. She’s afraid to put her hands on Meghan. For some reason she keeps recalling an article she read once about touching your car as you were pumping gas. Some poor professor in a turtleneck had burst into flames.

It’s not as if Meghan is crackling with electricity. She looks like any other unreasonably hot woman that could potentially want Gillian to touch her. There’s a tattoo peeking out from under her bra band, on her right side, and when she tosses her hair out of the way Gillian can see that it extends over her shoulder. The longer Gillian stares, the less interested Meghan looks, and when it hits a tipping point Gillian lurches forward, reaching for Meghan’s hips, and pulls her in for another kiss.

-

Meghan reaches for Gillian’s shoulders, half to steady herself and half because she can’t resist. Gillian doesn’t look like someone who sits behind a desk all day, and Meghan, if she had a little less pride, would be asking out loud where all the muscle comes from. Gillian is as good a kisser as Meghan remembers, maybe better now that she’s not caught by surprise, but Meghan is still mad at her, and she’s not too shy to make that a part of this, too.

She grabs one of the straps of Gillian’s bra and yanks her forward, toward the bed; she’s done this or some shade of this enough times that she knows exactly where the bed is behind her, Gillian tries to keep the kiss up, but it’s messy, both of them breathing hard against each others’ mouths when the kiss breaks, but they always find their way back to it. Gillian is as hungry for her as Meghan is for Gillian, and it’s nice to be on terms that she understands, finally. It had taken her long enough to crack the question of what Gillian wanted from her, but Meghan is good at this. She knows that for a fact.

At the last second, when the backs of her calves hit the bed, Meghan flips them so that she lands on top of Gillian, both hands still on Gillian’s shoulders. She realizes that her hand is too close to Gillian’s bandage and she moves it away, while Gillian smooths her hands along Meghan’s thighs to her hips with an intense look of concentration creasing her brows.

Meghan kisses her again, more deeply this time. Gillian had kissed her pretty deeply in the alley, too, but this is something else, something slow and dirty, and Meghan loses track of time, breathing only when she has to, barely noticing it when her hand moves down over the cup of Gillian’s bra. She’s going by instinct now, but it works out; when she rolls her thumb across the thin fabric Gillian pants against her mouth, both her hands tightening on Meghan’s hips. 

Meghan tests the waters by biting down on Gillian’s lower lip. Gillian arches up under her, and Meghan smiles to herself when she pulls back, just far enough to get her mouth on Gilian’s jaw instead. As she works her way to Gillian’s ear, she trails the fingertips of her right hand along Gillian’s shoulder, her bicep, to the crease of her elbow. It’s a surprisingly sensitive place that most people don’t think about. Meghan does. She brings her teeth against Gillian’s earlobe and brings just a static level of electricity to the soft skin of Gillian’s inner arm.

Gillian twitches under her and inhales in a way that doesn’t quite sound right. Meghan sits up, far enough to see the expression on Gillian’s face and register it as fear, and the bottom drops right out of everything.

-

Gillian is still in a haze of panic when she realizes the look on Meghan’s face is guilt. There’s confusion there, too, and Gillian has to take a few full breaths before the pieces start to fall into place. When she does understand, and realizes that Meghan is starting to pull away, her instincts take over again and she flips them, pressing Megan’s thighs apart with one of her own and rocking down into her in one smooth movement. This time it’s Meghan’s turn to gasp, and Gillian’s turn to swallow the sound in a kiss. The adrenaline is still coursing through her enough to make her brave, and it’s what she needs.

Her mind is clear again with Meghan’s hands fisted into the duvet on either side of her. Meghan had shocked her in an intentional way, but not with any intent to harm. In the context of the bedroom, Gillian understands that it was meant to be sexy. She wonders where Meghan got that idea, whether there have been people before her who sought that out or requested it. Somehow she knows that must be the case. It makes her bear down harder against Meghan, kissing her until their lips are chapped, and eventually, finally, Gillian puts her hands to Meghan’s skin.

Meghan is warm, and her skin is soft, but her body isn’t. She’s all muscle, and Gillian tries not to think about why. Instead she tries to enjoy it, and it’s surprising to her how easily she can forget. She slides her hand along the flat plane of Meghan’s stomach, and when her fingertips hit the band of Meghan’s bra, Meghan sits up and almost tears it over her head. Meghan seems hesitant to touch her, and Gillian has to admit to herself that she’s hesitant, too, but when Meghan rests her hand on Gillian’s upper back it feels fine. It feels normal. Gillian drops down so that they’re pressed together, chest to chest and hip to hip, and moves so that she’s kneeling between Meghan’s legs instead of straddling one of them.

She rests her hand on Meghan’s inner thigh, taking a breath, but Meghan isn’t interested in waiting. She places her heels on the bed, lifts her hips, and tugs her underwear down by herself, nearly kicking Gillian in the ribs in the process. Then she takes Gillian’s hand and guides it between her legs, and Gillian thinks it might be the hottest thing that has ever happened to her in her life.

Meghan lets go of Gillian’s hand as soon as it’s where she wants it, and Gillian loses the ability to think about anything else, anything other than the heat, Meghan’s breath against her cheek, Meghan’s fingers digging into her upper back. Gillian almost can’t believe how needy Meghan is, how effortlessly she finds a rhythm and how clearly she asks for more without saying a word. It clicks, the two of them, in a way Gillian wouldn’t have guessed, if she had let herself think about it.

The truth is she has been thinking about it. Having Meghan beneath her is thousands of times better than she could have dreamed up.

-

Gillian may not be a piano player, but her long, slender fingers are good for something. Meghan can’t get a full breath in, and she’s holding back a tremendous amount of energy. She knows she can control it, but she can’t draw this out at the same time--she has to pick. And she’s never shocking Gillian again. She doesn’t have much of a choice but to shake apart under Gillian much sooner than she would have liked, but it hits her so hard that her vision goes starry, and she clutches at Gillian’s shoulders and back with both hands, clamping her knees down around Gillian’s hips.

Gillian’s hips--Meghan had somehow assumed they would be narrow, because of the length of her legs and her arms, but they’re not. Gillian has curves, and Meghan, in the middle of losing her breath on a moan, wants to get her hands or her mouth on them, or both. Every time she think she’s recovered there’s another wave, until Gillian takes her hand back, sitting back on her heels. Her eyes are dark, darker than Meghan remembers from before, and she can’t seem to keep her eyes above Meghan’s collar. Not that Meghan minds. She’s still trying to catch her breath, and trying _not_ to remember the last time someone touched her just for the sake of touching her.

Gillian twists to look at the clock on Meghan’s dresser, and Meghan catches sight of something that surprises her, on Gillian’s lower back, further down than she had dared to put her hands while Gillian was on top of her. It’s a burn scar. Meghan has seen hundreds of them, but Gillian’s is a little bit different, a little bit too regular. Not the kind of scar you would get from an accident. She knows what it is without having to ask. She had always guessed that Gillian left something out of her story, but this--it’s not what she thought. She thinks about the sparks she ran across Gillian’s arm and feels a rush of guilt and shame so strong that it takes her breath away again.

“Do you need to leave?” she asks, surprised at how different her voice sounds.

Gillian considers her for a few more seconds, this time letting her gaze drift over Meghan’s face. Her lips are swollen, her hair more of a mess than usual, and Meghan can’t deny that it’s a good look for her. A fuller, more alive look.

“Do you want me to leave?” Gillian asks, and it really is just like her to answer with a question. 

Meghan answers by flipping them. She rolls on top of Gillian, and the first time she touches Gillian with her hands, Gillian hesitates. 

“I won’t,” Meghan says, and Gillian blushes a little bit, but it’s clear that she know what Meghan means. Meghan intends to prove it. She’s not sure if she can get Gillian to trust her, but she’s going to try, and that starts with just touching, dragging her open hands down along Gillian’s chest and stomach. Gillian writhes under her when Meghan’s hands reach her ribs, and Meghan slides them back up, over Gillian’s bra. She’s straddling Gillian’s hips, but Gillian is still in her underwear, so that when Meghan rocks against her she’s missing skin-on-skin. 

Gillian is responsive anyway. Her hands fly to Meghan’s waist, letting out a breath that’s halfway to a moan. Meghan is surprised at herself when she reacts so immediately to that, to any modicum of noise from Gillian, but then this is _Gillian_. She’s usually so poised, so distant. Now she’s under Meghan, starting to oser some layers of control.

This time when Meghan slides her hands over Gillian’s stomach, there’s no flinching, just Gillian panting, Gillian’s fingers pressing at the base of Meghan’s spine. Meghan maneuvers so that she can rest on her knees between Gillian’s legs, and Gillians hand leaves her back. Meghan is disappointed when Gillian doesn’t touch her again, but she doesn’t dwell on it. That’s not what this is, and that’s not what it’s about. Gillian is pink, waiting on Meghan, and Meghan takes the time to look Gillian over first. For all she knows this is the only chance she’ll get, and Gillian looks good like this, long and toned and wanting her.

Meghan knows the line between drawing things out and making someone wait. She toes that line, but sooner rather than later she places her hands on Gillian’s inner thighs, letting her thumbs brush across sensitive skin. Gillian gasps again, then closes her mouth as if she’d like to keep herself quiet. Meghan wants to tell Gillian not to worry about any neighbors, but she’s afraid to say something out loud and break the spell. She repeats with her thumbs until Gillian is squirming, and then she moves one hand to touch Gillian properly, leaving her other hand on Gillian’s thigh to steady her.

She wants to be closer, wants to lean down and kiss Gillian again, but she’s afraid to overstep. She doesn’t want Gillian to feel claustrophobic, so she leaves space between them, and instead she gets to see it all, from the way that Gillian tenses up to the way she claws at the bedspread. Eventually her blush deepens, and Meghan finds herself short of breath, too, praying that she can keep doing whatever is working for long enough.

In the end she has nothing to worry about. Her forearm has barely started to ache before Gillian goes tense under her hand, and Meghan can’t resist the urge to stroke along her hip while she comes down. Gillian turns her head to groan into the pillow, and it’s not out loud but it’s something, enough for Meghan to get a rush from. It seems like every time she blinks she sees Gillian differently. In the half-light from the street through Meghan’s blinds, with her dark chin-length hair falling haphazardly against the pillow and her cheeks, Gillian is beautiful. Meghan thinks it like a fact, because it is one. She’s not sure how she missed it before. 

As if Gillian can hear her thinking it, she opens her eyes, and Meghan takes her hand back. Eye contact feels too intimate all of a sudden, even with both of them naked, so she rolls onto her back and stares at her ceiling instead, wondering if she should say something, or if Gillian will.

“Thanks,” Gillian says, eventually. Meghan blinks, and Gillian continues in a bit of a rush, “for fixing my shoulder. And, um--for saving my life.”

Meghan isn’t sure she’s ever been thanked before outside of a hospital.

“Don’t waste it,” she says.

Gilian clears her throat.

“I won’t.”


	3. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a new girl on the force, and Kacey's more curious than she'd like to admit.

Kacey notices her right away.

Later she’ll wonder if she has a nose for Conduits, but it’s not as complicated as that. It’s the fact of a cute girl she doesn’t recognize walking into the precinct in blues that look like she ironed them three times before trying to put them on.

“Everyone,” the Lieutenant says, “this is Officer Poulin,” and the girl, young and fresh-faced, just out of the academy, blushes pink.

Kacey likes her for not walking in like she owns the place. She likes her for the crooked smile she gives her deskmate, a guy old enough to be her father who only, as far as she knows, goes by ‘Norm’. When Kacey goes into the lounge to make herself some coffee, they’re alone together and she takes it upon herself to introduce herself.

“Hey,” she says, and the new girl, surveying the meager offerings of the vending machine that rarely works, jumps like she’s been shocked.

“Oh,” she says, blushing again, “hi.”

“I’m Kacey,” she says, holding her hand out, and Poulin shakes it, but she doesn’t turn any less pink. “Bellamy. I’m in narcs.”

“Narcs?” Poulin asks, and Kacey takes her hand back so she can roll her sleeves up a little better.

“Narcotics,” she says, “drug busts, stuff like that.”

“I’m--I guess you heard my--you can call me Marie.”

“Marie,” Kacey says, testing it out. It fits her. She looks too soft and kind to be a cop, but Kacey doesn’t say that. For all she knows there’s a ruthless streak hiding behind that shy smile somewhere. She’s seem weirder things. Instead she sticks her hands in her pockets and jerks her chin in the direction of the vending machine.

“Don’t use bills,” she says, “it’ll eat them. And if you double-click the E3 button you can get two packs of pretzels instead of one.”

“Thanks,” Marie says, but she doesn’t turn back to the machine right away. She might be a little shy, but she’s not shy enough--or maybe not self-aware enough--to keep from looking at Kacey or a few more seconds, at where her sleeves are rolled up, or somewhere around there. When she looks up again she realizes Kacey’s seen her do it and turns away, her blush crawling across her cheeks and into her ears.

She seems harmless. 

-

“You’ll do a rotation with each division,” the Lieutenant tells her, “so that we see where your aptitude is. I know you tested into homicide, but it’s a little full, so I want to be sure we both know what you want and what your talents are before we rush into anything.”

“I kind of thought I would be starting with traffic,” Marie says, and he raises an eyebrow at her, smoothing one paw-like hand across his desk calendar.

“You are,” he says, and Marie is embarrassed for even momentarily assuming otherwise. “You’ll start with traffic,” he says, “then do a week’s rotation with narcotics, a week with homicide, a week with the bike unit, with juvenile, with fraud, and so on.”

The neon traffic vest makes her regret every decision she’s made in her entire life. She didn’t go through the police academy to get stuck writing parking tickets, and it bothers her that she’s annoyed at all, but she is. She’s bored. And even over the voice in the back of her head telling her it’s better that she’s bored than in trouble, even though she keeps reminding herself that someone writing parking tickets would be the last person anyone would suspect of being able to control things with her _mind_ , she’s still bored.

She’s counting through her numbers for the day on her notepad when she hears a voice ring out down the street that makes her look up immediately.

“Come on,” Kacey says, “I know that’s Clark’s spot, but he stole mine, check the permit numbers.”

“I’m not writing you a ticket,” Marie says, furrowing her brow and holding the notepad up, and Kacey grins, coming to lean against the hood of her car.

“Better not,” Kacey says. She nods at the book in Marie’s hand. “How many’d you get on your first day?”

“Is it a competition?” Marie asks, genuinely, and Kacey laughs.

“Everything in parking duty is a competition,” she says. “It’s how they keep from dying of boredom.”

Marie shows her the notebook, and Kacey makes a face, standing up straight.

“Not bad,” she says, “nobody’s beaten my record yet, but that’s not bad.”

“You were in parking?” Marie asks, and Kacey shrugs.

“Everyone starts somewhere,” she replies. “I didn’t go to the academy, I just took a job opening.”

“Oh,” Marie says. She clears her throat, unsure what else to say. She’s still on duty and Kacey’s not, her top two buttons undone, her shirt half untucked. She’s not sure what Kacey wants or where the conversation is going--she’s not really even sure she’s supposed to have a conversation like this at all, while she’s working--but something about Kacey makes her want to keep talking. She’s not used to that, but she’s not sure that she hates it.

-

Kacey keeps an eye on things. It’s most of her job, except on the days that shit actually goes down while she’s on the clock. She keeps an eye on the streets she patrols, on the younger kids in her unit, and on Meghan. Adding Marie to her list feels natural. It’s clear that Marie’s a little shy, and Kacey always likes to look out for those rookies. 

Plus, Marie is bad at giving parking tickets.

By Friday, Kacey has checked in with her every afternoon just to see what her rate is, and the verdict is in: Marie is too nice to be a traffic cop. Nobody gossips like cops do, and this is no exception. It makes Kacey’s skin crawl, hearing everyone judge Marie’s worth before her first paycheck has even hit.

She knows better than to say anything to them. She doesn’t need them thinking Marie is a teacher’s pet on top of it. Instead she looks for Marie again on Friday, and finds her unchaining a bike from the front of the building. For a moment Kacey wonders if it’s a traffic thing, and then she realizes it’s _Marie’s_ bike.

“Hey,” she says, and Marie turns to her, blushing immediately. That’s another thing she’ll have to grow out of--blushing every time someone acknowledges her. She must have been more confident in the academy.

“Hi,” Marie says, and then, a little oddly, “happy Friday.”

“Done with parking duty?” Kacey asks, leaning into the brick. Her feet are killing her from being up most of the day, talking to high school students about meth. Field trip day is the sadistic name for it in the precinct. It’s not her favorite.

“Yes,” Marie says, “thank God. I mean--not that it isn’t--”

“It’s fine,” Kacey says, “I’m not testing you. And anyway, parking sucks. Be glad you only have to do it a week. I did it for six months before I got promoted.”

Marie nods, chewing her lips. Her hair is down, and Kacey is surprised by it, somehow, the length or the color. Mostly Marie looks much different than she did as a metermaid twenty minutes ago. 

“I’m in narcotics next week,” Marie says, shyly, picking at the handlebars of her nice bike.

“Oh,” Kacey says, “already? I mean--good, that’s awesome. We’ll be glad to have the help. Maybe we’ll be able to convince you to hang around. We have way more fun than the homicide guys, don’t let them convince you otherwise. They spend all day looking at dead people.”

Marie cracks a smile.

“That doesn’t sound like my kind of scene,” she says.

“What is?” Kacey asks, and then amends, “I mean, what did you like the most, in the academy?”

Marie shrugs. Kacey has her guesses, but she expects them all to be wrong. She can’t get quite a read on Marie, or how she got here. She must be smart, book smart. A gifted interrogator, maybe, because she seems so nonthreatening.

“Marksmanship,” Marie says, and Kacey is just as surprised as she thought she would be.

“Oh,” she says. “Well, hopefully you won’t need too much of that. But, um, good to know.”

They make awkward eye contact for a few moments, before Kacey decides that she should let Marie leave like she had clearly been planning on doing. It seems silly now, whatever she thought she had been planning to say. She can’t believe she thought that suggesting Marie toughen up would have worked, or even been necessary. She’s brand new.

She’s a marksman.

“So, I guess I’ll see you on Monday,” Kacey says.

“Okay,” Marie says. “I mean, yes. Um--bye.”

-

It’s a nightmare that Marie has had hundreds of times.

They’re walking down the street, Kacey punching in the address of the warehouse on her phone. They’re undercover, which is still new to Marie, still feels strange that she’s on the job and just wearing normal clothes. 

“I’ve bought drugs wearing worse,” Kacey had said when Marie showed up in the khaki shorts and teal polo that the department had given her.

“I don’t look like someone who would buy drugs,” Marie mumbled, and Kacey raised her eyebrows.

“Actually,” she said, “you do look about ready to buy a brick of cocaine, if we’re being honest. You look like the kind of trust fund girl who likes to spend her daddy’s money on things that go fast. Cars and coke.”

“Uh, thank you.”

Now they’re walking down the street and Marie feels like it’s going to be obvious she’s an undercover cop the moment she walks in with Kacey. She has a gun, and Kacey does too, but neither of them are talking about how dangerous this is. How these people won’t hesitate to shoot them if they feel that they need to. How they’ll be outnumbered.

What they’re even supposed to do with the drugs.

She’s distracted, thinking about all of this at a corner while they wait for the light, when a Suburban rolls right through it. There’s a man walking across the street with his headphones in and his head down, holding a paper grocery bag in each hand. The car is going to hit him. It’s moving quickly enough that it will not only hit him, it might roll right over him, and it will absolutely, without a doubt, injure him.

So she stops it.

She doesn’t think about it. Her hand barely moves. It doesn’t really have to, and if she had been focused enough she could have kept herself entirely still, but as it is, her hand comes away from her leg, just a little bit, just enough, her fingers curling in. It’s an old instinct. She’s not stupid enough to just stop the car. Instead she thinks about the brake pedal, about slamming it, so that everyone sees and hears a car screeching to a half a few feet from the man in the crosswalk, who looks up, takes an earbud out, and flips the shocked driver the finger.

She thinks she may have gotten away with it until she turns her head and Kacey is gaping at her.

This is where it departs from her nightmare. In her nightmare, Kacey fires her immediately, or cuffs her and brings her in to the D.U.P. after charging her with lying on government documents--which she had to do to get onto the force. There’s no official rule saying that the force won’t hire Conduits, but they all know better. It’s as good a way of making sure you don’t get the job as having a criminal record. In the real world, Kacey claps her mouth shut and crosses the street. After a few seconds of shock Marie follows, trotting to catch up, feeling the weight of the gun in her waistband.

The thought of going into a warehouse full of armed drug dealers doesn’t bother her so much now. Kacey clearly knows what she is, what she’s capable of, and Marie knows that if she had to she could stop those bullets. She’s done for either way. She’s not sure why Kacey is putting it off, but a kind of calm descends over her when she realizes that she has nothing left to lose, nothing left to hide.

“Let me do the talking,” Kacey says. “Try to look rich and disinterested. Wipe your nose a couple of times.”

“What do we do with the stuff afterwards?” Marie asks, and Kacey gives her a look that says it was a stupid question.

They go into an alley that feels like the kind of place Marie wouldn’t want to be after dark, powers or not. Kacey checks for the gun against the small of her back, and, satisfied, finds a door that’s dummy-locked. Inside it’s dark and dusty, and Marie is afraid she’s going to sneeze. It’s not like they’re supposed to be stealth about this, but sneezing seems--against protocol somehow.

“Hey,” Kacey calls out, “you guys here, or what?”

A pair of guys who look like they have never had the privilege of a warm shower pop out of the shadows and scare Marie half to death. One of them grins at Kacey, whose posture is suddenly radically different. She looks like a different person, and Marie feels a little bit abandoned, like the Kacey she walked in with is gone.

“You got the cash?” the guy asks, and Kacey digs into her pocket for it. It’s all clean, crisp bills, but they don’t seem perturbed by that. She’s very aware of their guns and the space between them and Kacey, between them and her. Bullets are fast. She’s not sure how fast she is and she doesn’t want to find out.

“Who’s the sidekick?” the guy asks, jerking his head in Marie’s direction, and Kacey answers smoothly, like it’s an obvious truth.

“Cousin,” she says, “she sets me up when I’m in town, I set her up when she’s in town.”

“All in the family,” he agrees, and Marie wipes at her nose like Kacey told her to.

It all goes fine. Kacey tucks the ‘goods’ into her messenger bag and they go back into the sunlight of the alley like nothing strange at all has transpired. Knowing that Kacey knows her secret now makes Marie bold, and the fact that Kacey hasn’t addressed it annoys her. 

“We don’t look related,” she says when they get to the main street, and Kacey stops to look at her for a moment, flipping her sunglasses on.

“No,” she says, “I guess we don’t.”

A few hours later Marie is convinced that Kacey didn’t see anything at all. If she had, she would have done something about it. As is, they’re running tests on the cocaine they bought to see where it’s coming from, Kacey is getting debriefed on the sting--they’re ready for it now, now that contact has been established, or something--and Marie is stuck copying down paperwork from Kacey’s scribbly half-cursive into regular block print that any human adult could read. It’s challenging but it only requires certain parts of her brain. The rest are devoted to worrying.

When her shift is over, she wanders outside unsure what to do with herself, feeling as though going home is the wrong choice. It lasts two seconds before she sees Kacey waiting for her, her passenger side window down.

“C’mon,” she says, when Marie looks at her.

It occurs to Marie that she could say no. She could leave if she wanted to, lock Kacey into the cruiser without lifting a finger and disappear, go to some other city. It would be easy enough.

Or maybe it wouldn’t be.

Maybe the reason that Kacey hasn’t said anything to her until now is because Kacey’s like _her_. It’s possible. Marie knows, she’s done it. Maybe Kacey has just done it better. 

“Where?” Marie says, crouching down to ask it through the open passenger side window. Kacey makes a face.

“I can’t tell you that,” she says, “you know that.”

“I’m going home,” Marie says, but she doesn’t get up and she knows it’s not very threatening.

“I’m taking you to someone,” Kacey replies, “but that’s all I’m telling you right now.”

Marie gets in the car. There’s a lot of her telling herself that it’s a bad idea, a lot of the instincts that the academy taught her, but she’s not a cop right now. Right now she’s just Marie, and that part of her is scared and lonely enough that the prospect of Kacey being like her is enough to convince her to get in the car. Kacey looks relieved, chomping on gum that is so strongly cinnamon that the entire car smells like it.

-

Kacey takes her to Meghan.

She doesn’t plan to explain anything on the drive over. Meghan is much better at explaining all of it than she is. When Marie speaks, it catches her by surprise and she _answers_.

“You saw me,” she says quietly.

“Yes,” Kacey replies immediately, turning down another street. “Nobody else would have, though. So don’t worry about that.”

Marie doesn’t look convinced. She doesn’t look much of anything other than nervous. She keeps her hands in her lap and watches the road intently as if she’s the one driving, and Kacey almost feels bad that she doesn’t know what to say, but she still doesn’t. She always had this plan in place with Meghan, that if she came across someone who could use Meghan’s help this is how they would go about it. She never thought she’d find that person on the force.

She doesn’t really care much about the fact that Marie clearly forged her papers. She doesn’t, really, even care that someone with powers is on the force, handling guns and sensitive information. Marie doesn’t seem like the type to misuse it, and Kacey knows that, in her position, Meghan wouldn’t, either. That doesn’t mean that she doesn’t understand the rule.

Kacey clears her throat.

“I’m not going to turn you in,” she says, turning onto Meghan’s street.

“Okay,” Marie says quietly, wringing her hands in her lap. “Thank you.”

She parks two streets over from Meghan’s, which she always does. Not that it would be impossible for someone to follow her, if she were being trailed in the first place, but it makes her feel a little better, especially with someone else. Marie is watching her when they get out of the car, watching like she’s waiting for something. 

Kacey clears her throat and breaks eye contact before she can give into the urge to say something again. She knocks on Meghan’s door- four fast, two slow--and the door is thrown open immediately. Meghan hugs her before she notices there’s someone else there, and Kacey can feel the realization when Meghan stiffens a little bit.

“Sorry,” she says, “I would have called you, but--”

“Come in,” Meghan says, and Kacey wonders if Marie can hear the iron in her voice.

It’s not for Marie. It’s for her, for not keeping Meghan updated, which she should have, she just wasn’t sure what to say.

“This is Marie,” Kacey says, gesturing, “and I need a beer.”

“Of course you do,” Meghan replies, and it’s permission, even if it doesn’t sound like it. Kacey goes to the fridge and is relieved the second the can touches her hands. She finds a spot in Meghan’s living room, picking the most comfortable of the two armchairs, and watches Marie sit stiffly on one end of the couch.

“So,” Meghan says, folding into the other armchair, “Marie, what do you do?”

“I’m a police officer,” Marie says, so calmly that she sounds like she’s panicking. Meghan turns and shoots Kacey a withering look.

“You didn’t tell her anything,” she accuses, and Kacey frowns.

“I wasn’t sure how much to say,” she offers, and Meghan opens her mouth to keep berating her then changes her mind and turns back to Marie.

“I can create electricity,” she tells the girl on her couch, “with my hands. A lot of it. Anywhere from static electricity level to Taser level to lightning level.”

She doesn’t ask again, she just lets the information hang there, out in the open where Marie can decide whether or not she wants to make an admission. Marie glances at Kacey, who fixes her eyes on her can of beer and wishes she had any of the tact that Meghan does.

“I can move things with my mind,” Marie says finally. “I’m not sure how big. Nothing has ever been too big, but I haven’t--I was always kind of afraid to test it.”

“And you’re on the force,” Meghan says, but Kacey knows it’s a question for her.

“They don’t know--didn’t know,” Marie mumbles, and she looks so resigned to whatever terrible fate she thinks they have cooked up that Kacey finds it in her to speak.

“Don’t,” Kacey says, “they don’t know. I didn’t tell anyone. I’m not going to.”

“I had to lie,” Marie says, “or I wouldn’t have made it in. I wasn’t planning on using my powers, but...I couldn’t just watch someone die if I knew I could have stopped it. I tried to be careful.”

Meghan considers that for a few seconds, chewing her lip absently. Marie looks back at Kacey, who forces herself to maintain eye contact, even though the feeling in the pit of her stomach is back again. Marie is so scared and uncertain that it makes Kacey want to take care of her, and she can’t. She shouldn’t even want to. Marie is, objectively speaking, fine. She’s physically safe. Her emotional well-being shouldn’t matter this much to Kacey and she knows it.

She nods once, and Marie relaxes immediately, but not enough to keep Kacey from wanting to sit with her.

“Would it be obvious to anyone while you were doing it?” Meghan asks, and Marie looks uncomfortable again after that brief second of respite.

“I don’t know,” she says, “I don’t think so, but Kacey...”

“It wouldn’t be,” Kacey breaks in. She had been watching Marie. She had barely even seen the car at all. Admitting that she was watching would mean admitting that she felt like there was something to watch, and she wasn’t looking at Marie because she was suspicious.

“So then how did _you_ see it?” Meghan asks, and Kacey glares at her.

“Right place, right time,” she says, and she knows exactly how unconvincing it is. She can see the realization dawn almost wickedly across Meghan’s face. Marie doesn’t seem to be aware of much.

“You’re lucky,” Megan says, “I’m pretty obvious.”

“You’re her,” Marie realizes out loud, “I never thought--”

“Everyone thinks I’m a man,” Meghan laughs, “it helps me blend in. Nobody’s expecting me.”

They all fall quiet again. This time Kacey realizes that Meghan has caught her watching Marie again, and finishes her beer instead of looking at either of them. Marie looks at her hands. When she looks up, it’s at Kacey, who can’t help but blink back at her as she speaks.

“Why did you bring me here?”

Meghan doesn’t try to answer it. Kacey sits for a second, waiting for Meghan to save her, and she doesn’t, which is entirely fair but makes Kacey’s skin crawl. She uncrosses and recrosses her arms, searching for a comfortable position, but she knows there isn’t one.

“So Meghan can help you,” Kacey says finally.

“I don’t have a disease,” Marie says, and it’s so cold and sure of itself that Kacey gapes, taken aback. She hadn’t meant for it to come out that way at all, but she’s not sure how to tackle it now that it has.

“No,” Meghan breaks in, saving Kacey only once the tension becomes unbearable, “you don’t. You have a gift.”

Marie looks unimpressed with what is usually Meghan’s big moment, and Kacey starts to regret everything she’s done today, starting with getting out of bed. Meghan waits for Marie to speak, and when she doesn’t, she leans forward and rests her elbows on her knees.

“Kacey didn’t bring you here so I could help you,” Meghan says, “because you don’t need help. Kacey brought you here in case you could help me. I need all the help I can get.”

Marie looks away then, chewing her lips, and Kacey can tell that Meghan’s gotten through to her. It’s starting to feel like she should probably leave, but to do that she would have to walk between them, so she just pretends she’s not there and hopes they’ll do the same.

“I can’t help you,” Marie says, “I can’t use it.”

“Not at work,” Meghan agrees, “not in the open like that, no.”

“Meghan,” Kacey blurts, “she’s a cop. She can’t do what you do. All of us are trained to be suspicious.”

“You’re not my mother,” Marie snaps, and Kacey sinks back down into the chair, wishing that she had just left. After a few seconds she adds, to Meghan this time, “I could make it work.”

“You don’t have to,” Meghan says, “certainly not every night or all the time, but having any help at all--it’s a united front kind of thing. Two of us will be more intimidating than one. Alone I’m just some crazy, benevolent Conduit vigilante, but a pair starts to feel like a team, and maybe the idea of that will be enough to stop people from _doing_ bad things in the first place.”

Kacey’s heart constricts even though she knows Meghan’s framing it as if she’s alone to convince Marie to help. She’s not alone. She hasn’t been alone since Kacey found her, and the reason that Kacey knows enough to be concerned about Marie’s sleep schedule is because she doesn’t have one, between keeping Meghan in the know and lying awake worrying about her.

Marie thinks about it. Kacey watches her think, and Marie catches her watching and frowns, which is enough for Kacey to get up and stalk into the kitchen to throw her beer can away.

“Recycling,” Meghan calls, and Kacey reaches back down and slam-dunks it into the right bin, leaning against the counter with no attempt to disguise how put-out she is, as if she has any right to be. At least here she can only see the back of Marie’s head, and Marie can’t see her at all.

“Okay,” Marie says, “I’ll do it. I joined the force to help people, anyway,” she continues, and Kacey feels targeted even before her sentence ends, “not write parking tickets or pretend to buy drugs.”

Kacey wants to say that identifying drug smugglers is helping people, that most of them traffick people too, prey on addicts, abuse women, embezzle large amounts of money, and trespass, but she finds a way to keep her mouth shut, if only because Meghan glances at her and begs her to with just the look in her eyes.

Meghan scribbles her number down and passes it to Marie over the corner of the table.

“Call me on nights you’re free,” Meghan says, “I’m sure I can find something for us to do.”

That’s Kacey’s job, but Marie will find that out later, if she ever calls.

-

Marie waits a week. She manages, working with Kacey. It’s a little bit like being undercover, or at least that’s what she tells herself. She’s polite to Kacey. She mostly tries to work with other people, to learn about the department, all the things she’s supposed to be doing. She had envisioned it, before, as a week of trailing Kacey and maybe getting to know her better. It becomes the opposite of that. Marie doesn’t want to know anymore.

She’s getting better at lying to herself, anyway. For the first two days she feels like she might just try to forget Meghan entirely. On the third day, she’s so curious she almost calls. But it’s not until her first day off that she actually calls. She gets Meghan’s voicemail and almost hangs up.

“Hi,” Marie says to the empty air, “um, it’s me. I mean, it’s Marie. I’m free tonight if you wanted to um...to hang out.”

They should have talked about it, she thinks. There should be code words, set times, burner phones. They’re being too sloppy. If someone had a whiff of Meghan and wanted to track her, it wouldn’t be nearly hard enough, and Marie’s almost annoyed at Kacey for not thinking of it. She goes back to not-really-reading her book and waits for Meghan to answer her. It strikes her that maybe she should try making friends, but she’s not sure how to do it, not outside of school.

She had hoped Kacey would be her friend, come to think of it, but it seems like that ship has sailed. 

Eventually Meghan does call her back, and Marie fumbles and drops her phone in her haste to answer. 

“Hey,” Meghan says, “enjoying your weekend?”

“Sure,” Marie says agreeably, even though her day has been painfully slow and empty.

“Awesome,” Meghan says. “Well, if you wanted to hang out, I was planning on coming towards midtown to grab some dinner.”

“Oh,” Marie says. She’s faintly disappointed, and more than a little bit confused, but she’s not opposed to dinner. It’s not until she’s halfway there that she realizes it isn’t dinner at all.

It turns out she’s wrong twice. Meghan is having dinner. Marie sits across from her, in a cozy Italian hole-in-the-wall, and wonders if she’s supposed to order.

“Sorry,” Meghan says, “it’s too light out still, and I was hungry. Have you eaten?”

It feels more like an interview than a date, which was, for some reason, something Marie was worried about. Meghan asks her polite questions, but nothing too personal, nothing too specific that could get either of them in trouble. Marie has never realized how intensely boring she is, but it’s clear to her now, listening to Meghan talk. 

Meghan must not sleep.

Marie is so nervous that she’s afraid she doesn’t have much of a personality, but she wasn’t prepared to be social, she was prepared to scare some burglars, and now that part of the night is coming up she’s _nervous_ about it. 

“So,” Marie says, “how does this work? Do you just wait for something to happen?”

Meghan shrugs. She’s set them up on a roof and Marie can’t stop thinking about the fact that people live in this building.

“What if they saw us?” she asks, and Meghan shrugs. She hands Marie a dark beanie she had in one pocket of her hoodie, and Marie puts it on, pulling the hood of her own jacket up.

“Nobody’s expecting us,” Meghan points out, and Marie can’t disagree. Before she met Meghan she had expected almost the exact opposite. They’re lucky, because they don’t look suspicious. They just look cold.

Meghan is the one who spots them first. A pair of men trying to break into an ATM, looking like total amateurs, somehow avoiding setting off any alarms. Marie wishes she had her gun with her, or a baton, or anything she’s been trained to use in self defense. She has no idea what to do, and she’s too embarrassed to say so to Meghan.

So she follows Meghan down without a word. They watch from around a corner for a few seconds, Meghan slipping into a pair of fingerless gloves.

“Won’t you--won’t those burn?” Marie hisses.

“No,” Meghan says, “comes from my fingertips.”

“So,” Marie says, “what should we--”

“We’ll wing it,” Meghan says, “come on, let’s scare the shit out of these guys.”

-

Kacey’s a little bit smug about showing up to the party.

Sure, she shows up late, after Meghan and Marie already have both morons neutralized, but she shows up in her cruiser and can’t pretend she doesn’t enjoy the way that Marie gapes at her.

“Thanks for the ride,” Meghan says, slipping into the passenger’s seat. Marie settles into the back and says nothing.

“Best thing about getting promoted,” Kacey says conversationally, “is getting to take this bad boy home.”

“Bad boy,” Meghan repeats, shaking her head, “sometimes I feel like you should talk less.”

Marie clears her throat, and Kacey resists the urge to ask her how she enjoyed her first night on the job. She can see Meghan watching her, and she knows that Meghan knows her well enough to anticipate that. She keeps her mouth shut, but only barely.

“I can drop you off wherever,” she says, eventually, when she pulls up a block or so from Meghan’s apartment. Marie takes a second to realize that’s addressed at her, and when she does she flushes, and Meghan rolls her eyes without actually rolling them.

They both get out of the car, and Kacey can hear Meghan thanking Marie for coming out and helping her, can hear her say to get some sleep, not to be afraid to take a sick day if she needs it. When Marie gets into the passenger seat and Meghan leaves, Kacey waits for instructions, but nothing comes at first.

“I didn’t know you helped her,” Marie says eventually.

“She’s my best friend,” Kacey says simply.

“Second and Arundel,” Marie replies, and Kacey pulls away from the curb, idly wishing that she could turn the radio on. It would just be police chatter, though, and she doesn’t feel like hearing it. Their jobs are never really done. She doesn’t like the reminder. Without Meghan there to glare at her, it’s harder to keep her curiosity at bay.

“Does your power work on people?” she asks, and Marie stiffens so hard that Kacey can practically hear and feel it.

“No,” Marie says, “objects. Just objects.”

It’s another three blocks before Kacey says, “you’ve never tried it, have you?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Marie snaps, which only lets Kacey know that she’s right.

“We got along fine,” Kacey says, “before, you know? We were getting along fine.”

“And then you kidnapped me,” Marie points out, and Kacey falls quiet again. She can’t really refute that. She could--Marie came under her own power, and Kacey never tried to coerce her, at least not physically--but she knows that it’s just semantics. She manipulated Marie into coming with her blindly, and just because it worked out doesn’t change the fact that she did it.

But the apology gets stuck in her throat. At the corner Marie gave her, Kacey turns on the lights and pulls over so that Marie can get out. She doesn’t get a thank you, doesn’t get so much as eye contact, just a view of Marie’s retreating back and the lump in her throat that she can’t swallow.

-

Seeing Kacey at work is agony.

Part of it is just that Marie knows so much she can’t reference, can’t react to, in person. Part of it is that she’s furious at Kacey, but grateful, too. She does her best to ignore everything other than whatever paperwork is right in front of her, but of course Kacey catches up with her eventually. Marie expected as much.

Kacey finds her back in the break room, getting coffee, like the first time.

“I’m sorry,” is how she starts the conversation. She’s clutching a styrofoam cup in one hand and blocking the exit, but she’s nervous, it’s obvious in the set of her shoulders.

Marie doesn’t say anything. She just stirs her coffee.

“I shouldn’t have done that the way that I did,” Kacey continues, being purposely vague. “I haven’t done it in ages. I’ve only done it for her once before and it didn’t work out, and it wasn’t someone I...”

She breaks off and clears her throat, and Marie looks up just in time to see that Kacey is _blushing_. She’s not sure what to do with that information, not sure how to process anything , including and especially the way that blush fills Kacey’s cheeks and travels down her neck.

“Anyway,” Kacey says, “I’m not asking for anything, you don’t have to forgive me, or anything. I just wanted to say it. I’m sorry. “

“Okay,” Marie says, and Kacey nods to herself. She stands there for a few more seconds as if she’s expecting something else, and then she disappears again.

They settle into a routine. It works for them, avoiding each other when they have to, Marie working her way through her rotations and simultaneously learning that nothing is quite as exciting as narcotics was. The thrill of walking straight into a den of drug dealers, disguised only incompletely, is totally unmatched by anything she’s seen anywhere else. Maddeningly, Kacey was right. Homicide is boring. Everyone is already dead. Marie spends most of the time talking to the medical examiner while the actual detectives get to chase down the bad guys.

And then she gets the call.

“This is a big project,” Meghan says, “you should probably head here tonight.”

Kacey isn’t there, and Marie is surprised, but Meghan is all business, with photos and a map spread out on her kitchen table. A real map, paper, with little sticky notes all over it.

“I got a big one,” Meghan says. “I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure, but I’m sure, and it’s huge. Traffickers. I don’t know how many girls they have, but I know they’re moving some girls tonight. And that’s a start.”

It’s somehow more serious than Marie expected. They haven’t dealt with anything yet involving innocent people. It seems like a leap, but Meghan is clearly sold on it, and Marie doesn’t want to back out of it. She got involved to help people like this. It was never going to be a job about busting burglars. 

“Let’s do it,” she says. She feels stupid once she’s said it, like a cartoon superhero, but Meghan grins at her and squeezes her forearm and then Marie feels a lot less stupid. Meghan is good at this, born for this, probably--charming but not in an affected way, beautiful but not in an untouchable way, and sincere enough to convince almost anyone to believe her. And Marie believes her. They’re going to do this thing.

“Kacey will meet us there,” Meghan says, and just like that Marie’s nervousness is back in full force.

-

“There,” Kacey says, pointing them out. “See the girls with them?”

“They’re so young,” Meghan murmurs, pressing her hand against the brick wall beside them, “I mean, they’re teenagers.”

“I know,” Kacey says. “We busted the ringleader for his coke stash, I know these guys were involved but we didn’t have any evidence to prove it and they got out of the place in time. I was the only one who had seen them, and we can’t just, like--sit on them and wait for them to fuck up again.”

“But you couldn’t just let them walk away either,” Meghan says, smiling, and Kacey dips her head.

“Did you give their descriptions in?” Marie asks, and Kacey glances at her, annoyed immediately.

“Of course I did,” she says, “I’m determined, not stupid. It doesn’t matter, the force has enough active cases that they’re not going to waste time, money or resources following around a couple of loose ends.”

Nobody says anything to that. Kacey looks until watching the three grown men paw at scared, desperate teenage girls makes her mad enough to wish she’d brought her gun, and then she looks away. It’s the breaking point for Meghan, too, whose hand on the wall closes into a fist.

“Okay,” she says, “Marie, I’m going to go straight in at them and draw their attention. This is complicated because they have hostages. If we have to choose between hurting those girls to stop them, or letting them go, we’re letting them go. Kacey can find them again.”

Kacey hopes she doesn’t have to. Something tells her that if she finds them again, with or without Meghan, she’s going to want to have her gun.

“What do you want me to do?” Marie asks.

“Stop them,” Meghan says. “Hit them with something. Damage property, you’re going to have to.”

Marie is silent. Kacey can practically hear her running through the fines and sentences for trespassing and destruction of private property.

“You didn’t come here to arrest these guys,” she mutters, glancing again and catching a glimpse of one man’s hand on the back of a girl’s neck.

“Go,” Marie blurts, “I can do it.”

Meghan goes. She pops her hood up, pulls her scarf over her mouth, and crackles. It’s more than Kacey’s seen her use before, but that’s not surprising. The three men turn in unison, and one immediately puts a girl between him and Meghan, who doesn’t speak to him. She can, and she will eventually--nobody will ever believe them that she’s a woman, or at least not anyone important. But for now she just advances.

And Marie hesitates.

“If you’re not going to back her up one hundred percent,” Kacey hisses, panic edging at the back of her mind, “don’t pretend that you will, because she’ll trust you.”

Marie maintains eye contact with her when she rips a fire escape off of the next building.

Kacey blinks, and Marie looks away, leaning out so that she can watch what she’s doing when she separates the stairs and railings and makes long, spearlike strips with them. She doesn’t move her hands or anything else. The men tighten their grips on the two girls, and Meghan, always one for a little spectacle, reaches up and sends electricity up to the metal shards of the fire escape, so that everything is blue and crackling.

“Fuck,” one of the guys says, the guy without a girl in his arms, “fuck this, I’m out,” and he runs.

Marie throws a beam at him and it hits him square in the back, He falls, sprawling in a way that to Kacey looks like his back must be broken, and she swallows when Marie grits her teeth so loudly that she can hear it.

She wants to say that he deserved it, but she doesn’t say anything.

“Let the girls go,” Meghan says, pitching her voice down. She’s still clearly a woman, and Kacey kind of loves the way their faces change when they realize it. She definitely loves the way the realization breaks across the _girls’_ faces.

“And you’ll let us go?” one of the men asks, and Marie drops the beams a few feet closer to them.

“I never said that,” Meghan replies.

“Then why would we let them go?” he snarls.

“Because,” Meghan says, “if you don’t, one of those things goes right through your head, and if you do, it’ll just break both your legs.”

“You’re bluffing,” the other guy says.

“Maybe,” Meghan agrees, “but my friend’s not.”

Marie doesn’t move. Kacey shoves her and she stumbles into the open. The guys stare at her, uncomprehending, until she lifts her hands and drops the bars another foot.

One of the men lets the girl go. More accurately, he throws her forward, and she lands on her hands and knees, scrambling away from the bars but not away into the dark. It takes Kacey a second to realize she’s waiting for her friend.

“Do it,” Meghan says. Marie drops a bar and hits the guy in knees as he’s turning to run. Kacey can hear the bones breaking, can smell the electricity burning through his clothes.

“Not bluffing,” Meghan says.

He lets the girl go. She runs to her friend and they huddle against the wall together, arms around each other. Kacey thinks about going to them, itches to do it, but knows that she can’t, at least not yet. Marie drops another bar, but Meghan stops her, holding a hand out.

“I want this one,” she says.

Of course, this man is the one stupid enough to wait to be last, so he’s also stupid enough to charge her like a bull. Meghan steps aside and catches him with one hand as he passes her. He falls as if she’s shot him, doesn’t even scream, is unconscious before he hits the ground.

“You cooked him,” Marie says, as if the guy whose knees she broke isn’t crying on the ground five feet from her.

“No,” Meghan says, “I Tased him. With...like six or seven Tasers.”

-

He’s dead.

Marie keeps telling herself that, but she still checks. Still kneels and looks for a pulse, expecting nothing, terrified about what it means. When she touches him, his eyes flutter, and there is a pulse, even if it’s weak. He’ll never walk again. She doesn’t feel bad for him.

Some part of her tries to insist that she’s done something wrong, that her lack of remorse makes her dangerous to herself and to everyone around her, but it doesn’t really register. The only thing that does register is the way that Kacey guides the two girls out of the alley, sheltering them with her arms in a way that changes her entire posture, her entire self. It’s a different Kacey than the one that was there around the corner with Marie.

“She’s a good person,” Meghan says, watching her go. Marie stands up, wiping her hands on her jeans even though there’s nothing to wipe off. 

“She’s a better person than me, I think,” Meghan continues.

“I work at eight,” Marie says.

“Thanks for helping,” Meghan replies after a second, but she’s watching Marie so carefully that she feels like she’s under a microscope. Whatever complicated feelings Marie has about Kacey, she doesn’t particularly want Meghan to know about them, and Meghan seems like someone who could read all of her thoughts if she put her mind to it.

She doesn’t get less annoyed with Kacey. She forgets it, but only for days at a time, only once she’s transferred to homicide for her next rotation and doesn’t see Kacey every single day. Still, Kacey has a good reputation. She has a lot of friends. Marie sees and hears about her more than she’d like to.

Every time she does she remembers Kacey’s arms around those girls. There’s a night that Marie goes out with Meghan where Kacey doesn’t show up, and Marie goes for two hours without asking about it before her curiosity gets the better of her.

“I told her to stay home,” Meghan says, wrapping her hands like she’s going to fight and not electrocute someone. “I have to do that every once in a while or she won’t sleep, and then when she gets sick and feels like she’s dying I’m the one that gets the phone call begging for eggdrop soup and sympathy.”

It’s the first time that Marie starts to suspect something. She remembers Meghan hugging Kacey the night that Kacey brought her in, and pairs that with this new information, drawing in what she’s experienced with Kacey insisting on Meghan’s safety, second-guessing Marie’s every move.

It makes too much sense. 

The next time Kacey joins them she’s antsy, antsier than normal. Meghan’s going after four people with a van full of money that they’re laundering themselves. Two of them are heavily armed, more so than usual. Machine guns, Marie thinks, but she doesn’t ask. Kacey would know the model and the magazine capacity. 

“I could,” Meghan says, “just zap the machine and ruin their whole operation, but then they’d still be out there. And if they can get it once they can get it again.”

“It’s just money,” Kacey grumbles.

“Yes,” Meghan agrees sarcastically, “I’m sure a group of money-laundering criminals doesn’t dabble in narcotics, robbery, or assault.”

“I don’t like it,” Kacey insists, “they have a getaway vehicle and the advantage of firepower. I can’t call a fucking ambulance for you, Megs. Okay?”

“Kacey,” Meghan says evenly, “if they hit me with one of those, an ambulance won’t do any good anyway.”

“Jesus Christ,” Kacey mumbles, pinching the bridge of her nose. Marie feels sick.

“Alright,” Meghan says, “same as always, I’ll go first.”

She steps out of cover before anyone can say anything else. Marie’s entire body stiffens in terror for a second before she gets a handle on it and forces herself to focus. As soon as they see her, the two people with guns--a man and a woman--aim them at her.

“Hey,” Meghan says, “I need some money to go back to school, can I take a loan out?”

“Just shoot her,” someone says from inside the van, “it’s not hard to hide a fucking body.”

The situation escalates just like that. They don’t even know who Meghan is, or what she can do, or why she’s there, really. They just shoot. Marie doesn’t have time to think, to make a decision, to do anything other than close her hand into a fist. Next to her, Kacey yelps.

The bullets clatter to the pavement a foot from where Meghan stands. She staggers back, and for a single, heartstopping second Marie thinks she’s missed it, or only gotten one gun. Meghan’s sweatshirt is black. If blood is blooming from an exit wound they won’t be able to see it. She’s not off balance for more than a moment, and then all she does is steady herself and send a blast of electricity straight to the van. It’s an oddly beautiful thing, the way that fingers of lightning branch off to catch each individual person, how they all fall in unison and the van rocks, smoking in silence, when it’s all said and done.

Kacey leaps away from the wall. Meghan is holding her left arm and sits down heavily, Kacey half-catching her with an arm around her waist.

“I’m fine,” Meghan says, “it just grazed me, I’m just lightheaded from,” she gestures at the mess she left behind.

Kacey looks up at Marie and her expression is almost unreadable. Almost. There’s definitely anger there.

“You got shot,” Kacey says to Meghan, and to Marie it sounds like an accusation.

“Barely,” Marie snaps, “in case you didn’t notice all the bullets on the ground that _didn’t_ hit her, I can count them for you.”

“Sure,” Kacey replies, “that sounds helpful, do that.”

“You want to call off your rabid girlfriend?” Marie snaps at Meghan, who’s looking between them as if she’s mildly entertained, “because if not I can go.”

Meghan stares at her. Kacey stares at Meghan.

“My,” Meghan starts, and then she throws back her head and laughs.

“This needs stitches,” Kacey mumbles, tugging Meghan to her feet.

“Not dating,” Meghan gasps, “trust me, we tried that.”

Meghan doesn’t need Kacey’s help to walk, but Kacey walks close to her anyway, closer when the sirens start. They duck into alleys like they always do, but this time it’s like Meghan has a destination, and Kacey picks up on it right around when Marie does.

“We going somewhere?” Kacey asks.

“Gillian’s,” Meghan says, “is closer than my place.”

“And she has a first aid kit ready,” Kacey says sarcastically, “for you to stitch yourself up.”

“Yes,” Meghan replies, completely seriously, “and whiskey, both of which I need, immediately.”

Marie only knows of one Gillian. She had read Apps’ stories out of morbid curiosity and made herself sick over the fact that people believed things like that, that people like her should be locked up for being born with the unfortunate side effects of a genetic mutation regardless of whether or not she’s ever hurt anyone. It can’t be the same person, but the name alone makes her nervous. She’s almost too exhausted to feel it.

-

Gillian hovers over Meghan and Kacey increasingly feels the need to punch something. Not Gillian, not anymore, not when she’s so tender with Meghan, when she holds Meghan’s arm still while Meghan stitches herself back up, but a wall, maybe. 

Marie looks shellshocked, sitting completely at attention with her jaw locked, which Kacey only notices once she’s done being annoyed at the complete 180 Gillian has done since the last time Kacey bothered to read anything she’d written. It’s not that she doesn’t believe that Gillian cares about Meghan. It’s that reality is too weird for her to wrap her brain around sometimes, and now is one of those times--but if she’s feeling like that, Marie is in full, silent panic mode.

Gillian notices the way Marie is staring at her and sighs.

“It’s okay,” she says, “I don’t believe the things I write.”

“Anymore,” Kacey grumbles, and Meghan shoots her a look that Kacey returns, an even, angry stare that ends in a stalemate. Meghan might be mad at Kacey for having something to say about Gillian, but Kacey is plenty mad at Meghan for dragging Marie all the way here without explaining to her that they would be safe. Or that Gillian’s pieces are a cover now instead of an honest representation of her opinion.

After a few seconds of tense silence, once Meghan’s stitched up and taken a shot of whiskey, she balances her elbows on her knees and says, blushing a little, “I’m gonna stay here, so--you guys are good.”

Marie blinks. Kacey watches her reaction instead of looking directly at Meghan or at Gillian, who seems to be hearing Meghan’s plan to stay for the first time, herself. She’s sure that Marie thought Gillian was just a friend until now, because she looks shellshocked when they go back out into the street. It’s past three now, but Kacey’s not tired. Glad she has the next day off, but not tired. Not yet.

“They're,” Marie gestures vaguely, and hysterical laughter wells up in Kacey without her permission, forcing her to double over and lean into the wall. Marie watches her laugh for a little while with a confused and annoyed frown on her face that only makes Kacey laugh harder, until her stomach hurts and she forces herself to calm down. A lot of it, she knows, is adrenaline, like Meghan had laughed earlier. 

“Yes,” Kacey says eventually, when she can. “Yeah. Not me. Gillian.”

“It's an easy mistake to make,” Marie says, looking away, and Kacey is immediately sorry for laughing. Marie looks exhausted, from the bags under her eyes to the sloping line of her shoulders. 

“It is,” Kacey agrees.

She thinks about the bullets on the ground earlier, any one of which could have taken her best friend’s life. Marie stopping them is what Kacey’s thinking of when she reaches out and touches the back of Marie’s hand, surprising even herself. Marie turns to look at her, unsure, and Kacey clears her throat. 

“Thank you,” she says. “For saving her life.”

Marie looks down at their hands for a moment and then nods, looking away and blinking back tears that make Kacey want to cry, too. It's been a hell of a day. 

“You're not the only one who wouldn't know what to do without her,” Marie says.

They stand for a few seconds without speaking before Kacey can't help herself and has to break the silence, both her hands shoved back into her pockets. She can still feel how soft Marie’s hand was. 

“Why did you join the force?” She asks, and when Marie looks at her she feels the need to clarify. “Growing up, figuring out you were, you know,” she says, “was it--were you trying to hide in plain sight?”

She can practically see Marie shut herself down again, retreating behind some wall that almost losing Meghan had toppled, at least temporarily. 

“Of course not,” Marie says, “I don't have a death wish. I just wanted to help people. My powers--I knew I could help people but you grow up being told that using them is the wrong way to help, that you can only hurt people. So I joined the force, because that was the right way. The good way.”

Kacey clears her throat. She’s not sure she wants to say it, but Marie looks like she needs to hear it, so she forces herself to speak again, but she doesn’t look at Marie when she does.

“They’re not symptoms,” she says, “it’s a gift, they’re powers.”

“I’m not a hero,” Marie replies, but she sounds a little bit less sure of that.

“Whatever you are,” Kacey says, pushing herself off the wall, “let’s get you home.”

-

Marie hesitates before she gets out of the cruiser. It’s weird to ride in Kacey’s car, because if she doesn’t think too hard about it they could be partners, and it’s jarring to realize that they are, kind of. Unofficially. No badges for the work that they do together.

“Are you going home?” Marie asks, and Kacey shrugs.

“Dunno. Maybe. I’m not sure if Meghan’s staying over there, she might need me later.”

Marie wants to ask if Meghan needs her often, but she knows how it sounds.

“I live closer,” she says instead, though she can hardly believe herself, “and I have a couch.”

“So tempting,” Kacey teases, and Marie turns pink, she can feel it happening. Her hand is on the door when Kacey corrects herself, putting the car in park. “If it’s not an inconvenience,” she says, and Marie purses her lips, trying to control her blushing and knowing she never will.

“No,” she says, “I offered.”

“So you did,” Kacey agrees, and Marie gets out of the car instead of try to decide whether Kacey is actually flirting with her. It makes no sense. They don’t particularly like each other. Kacey kidnapped her and doesn’t trust her to do her job half the time. They were in a life or death situation a little over an hour ago. 

Maybe Kacey just feels bad for her. It seems reasonable. She had been dumb enough to think Kacey and Meghan were an item she might be dumb enough to convince herself that Kacey’s intentions are in any way serious. It’s probably a joke, but that doesn’t stop Marie’s heartbeat from spiking. Kacey’s been trained to notice things like that, like nervousness and excitement, and Marie know she wouldn’t be able to hide it anyway. If she’s lucky, Kacey won’t make fun of her for it.

She leads Kacey upstairs, nudging the door with her knee until it pops and creaks open, like it always has. Her apartment is clean, because it’s always clean, but she knows it looks like a model, not like a place where she lives. She doesn’t like to be home. It’s quiet and still and too empty for her. If she’s here she’s asleep. It takes her a few seconds to remember where her extra blanket is, and when she comes back with it Kacey is standing in the living room, looking out the window.

“You have a pretty nice view,” she says. It seems like kind of a weird thing to say, and Marie doesn’t have an answer. It’s an okay view. She’s still thinking about Meghan, about how close Meghan came to dying, about how long she hesistated when there was never going to be any other course of action. She was taught better at the academy and she knows it. She’s sure Kacey knows it too, even if she didn’t attend.

“I’ll get you a pillow,” she says, realizing what she forgot, and Kacey turns around. The look on her face is enough to stop Marie without Kacey having to reach out at all. It’s a heavy look, an intent look, and Marie’s not sure anyone’s ever looked at her like that before. 

“I had a bit of a crush on you,” Kacey admits, and Marie swallows hard. She’s not sure what an adult is supposed to do when someone says that to them, someone they’re attracted to, the situation is so complicated that all she can do is stand there and stare. Kacey turns a little pink around the collar and looks down at her hands, which makes Marie look at her hands, which doesn’t help anything.

“When you were assigned to me,” Kacey says, “for your narcotics rotation. I thought you were cute.”

“And then you found out I was a Conduit,” Marie prompts, because it sounds like that’s where this is going. Kacey blinks and looks up, and Marie realizes she’s read the situation wrong. Again.

“Um,” Kacey says, “you--my best friend is a Conduit.”

“I had a crush on you, too,” Marie says, startled, and Kacey’s blush travels up into her cheeks. She looks sheepishly back down at her hands.

“And then I kidnapped you,” she says, and Marie has to laugh. She didn’t expect Kacey to like her, but she _definitely_ didn’t expect Kacey to be charming.

“And then you kidnapped me,” she agrees. This time when Kacey looks up she takes a step closer, and Marie meets her halfway, curious, unsure how this is supposed to work. She’s had girlfriends before, but that’s not what this is, not really. Kacey reaches up and places a hand on Marie’s shoulder, brushing her thumb along Marie’s collar, her eyes fixed somewhere around Marie’s lips and not on her face. Marie reaches for Kacey’s waist to pull her in the last few inches. Kacey’s slightly taller than her, but she barely has to tip her chin down to make the kiss a reality.

It’s not where Marie expected to be an hour ago, but it makes sense here and now, like this is exactly where they should be. They were close to losing tonight. Losing Meghan, losing someone else, losing their cover, all of it was on the line, and Marie knows it won’t be the last time. It’s never felt as fragile as it it does now, with something more solid and more permanent in her arms.

-

Kissing Marie kills every ounce of self control that Kacey thought she had. She’s been simmering in her attraction to Marie for months now, feeling guilty about it for various reasons, most of which were her fault. She had never expected to be here, so it takes her some time to catch up mentally, and by then the kiss has advanced, and she’s swiping her tongue across Marie’s lower lip. 

Marie probably got laid routinely in the academy. Kacey can’t imagine that she didn’t, with arms like that. Kacey has her hands on those arms now, on Marie’s biceps, and Marie’s hands stay steadfastly on her waist, as if she’s afraid to move them. It hits Kacey suddenly that what they’re doing here isn’t what she expected. She knows, though she’s not sure how, that they won’t sleep together tonight. It’s not that kind of kiss. It’s a question that they’re both answering, 

Marie pulls back first. Kacey is self-conscious, suddenly, wondering if she should go outside and get an Uber or something, but Marie is more comfortable and confident in this moment than Kacey’s ever seen her and she doesn’t want to miss it, whatever it is. Marie is so much more than Kacey expected.

“I guess I forgive you,” she says.

“That’s a relief,” Kacey croaks, and she’s annoyed at her voice for giving her away. She already misses Marie’s hands. She’s already daydreaming about them sliding up under her shirt, over her ribs.

“Let me grab you a pillow or a blanket or something,” Marie says, turning away, and Kacey crosses her arms. The apartment is cool now without Marie standing so close to her. 

“I only get one?” she jokes, and Marie shakes her head.

-

They don’t talk about it the next morning. Neither of them are working, but when Kacey wakes up, Marie is already dressed, sitting quietly on her balcony in a sweater that’s too long in the arms. Kacey watches her for a few seconds, long enough to feel awkward about it.

She joins Marie on the balcony, and without a sweater, still in her clothes from the night before, she feels out of place and clammy. Marie is watching cars pass on the street and she doesn’t look up but briefly when Kacey sits on the other porch chair.

“Sleep okay?” Marie asks.

“Yeah,” Kacey says. 

“I keep thinking about last night,” Marie says, and Kacey’s stomach flips.

“Me, too,” she admits, and Marie makes eye contact with her again, finally. She looks way too serious, and Kacey’s expecting, suddenly, to be told they probably shouldn’t have kissed at all, which she already knows. She had just hoped that Marie’s judgment was as bad as hers. Bad enough to do it again.

“She could have died,” Marie says, “we all could have died. It’s the first time I really--I didn’t really get it before. Only as a concept.”

Marie’s not talking about that at all.

It takes Kacey a few seconds to adjust to that. She chews her lips and tries not to think about how close Meghan was to being swiss cheese.

“Yeah,” Kacey says. “I know. I mean, I could tell, I guess. Not in a bad way, just...we’ve been doing this for so long that I’m always aware of it.”

Marie brings her knees up to her chest. She looks like a little kid like that, and Kacey is hit with a sudden and incredibly strong urge to protect her. The feeling is ridiculous for more reasons than the fact that she watched Marie stop several bullets in a split second twelve hours ago.

“So it never gets better,” Marie murmurs. It’s not something that Kacey feels like she was supposed to hear, but she responds to it anyway.

“I didn’t say that,” she says, “it gets--easier. It gets easier to do.”

“It feels like plugging holes in a dam,” Marie says, “like maybe we stopped this one bad thing from happening but there’s something bigger we can’t even see.”

Kacey wishes she could disagree.


End file.
